Well aware of that, but it can be a bit of a pain if you're tunneling more than a couple protocol or if your tunneling to more than a couple of hosts. Also, VPN let's you use the same configurations as you would if you were local to the machines, you don't have to use localhost, etc.
And of course, there's also well known performance problems tunneling over SSH because you incur a double hit from the TCP backoff algorithm. Not to mention that you can't (easily) tunnel udp over SSH....
Come to think of it, there's no real comparison. SSH is a great remote shell protocol, but a shitty VPN protocol (not surprising since it's not * intended* to be a VPN protocol).
And of course, there's also well known performance problems tunneling over SSH because you incur a double hit from the TCP backoff algorithm. Not to mention that you can't (easily) tunnel udp over SSH....
Come to think of it, there's no real comparison. SSH is a great remote shell protocol, but a shitty VPN protocol (not surprising since it's not * intended* to be a VPN protocol).