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Getting started with SSH key 
management
When you connect to a host via SSH, you'll be asked for your password, and after 
you authenticate you'll be connected. Instead of using your password, though, 
you can authenticate 
via public key authentication instead. The core benefit to this 
method is added security, as your system password is never transmitted during 
the process of connecting to the server. When you create an SSH key-pair, you are 
generating two files, a 
public key
 and a 
private key
. These two files are mathematically 
linked, so if you connect to a server that has your public key, it will know it's you 
because you (and only you) have the private key that matches it. While public key 
cryptography as a whole is beyond the scope of this book, this method is far more 
secure than password authentication, and I highly recommend that you use it. To 
get the most out of the security benefit of authentication via keys, you can actually 
disable password-based authentication on your server so that your SSH key is your 
only way in. By disabling password-based authentication and using only keys, 
you're increasing your server's security by a sizeable margin. We'll go over that in 
Chapter 21
, 
Securing Your Server
.
When you exit an OpenSSH connection, any processes you may 
have had running in the background will be killed. Be sure you 
resume any background processes you may have running and 
finish working with them before you exit your connection. We took 
a look at how to run processes in the background back in 
Chapter 7
, 
Controlling and Monitoring Processes
.

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Connecting to Networks