Close to 7 years ago, I wrote about SSH through jump hosts. Twice. While the method used back then still works, Openssh has grown an new option in version 5.3 that allows it to be simplified a bit, by not using nc.

So here is an updated rule, version 2016:

Host *+*
ProxyCommand ssh -W $(echo %h | sed 's/^.*+//;s/^\([^:]*$\)/\1:22/') $(echo %h | sed 's/+[^+]*$//;s/\([^+%%]*\)%%\([^+]*\)$/\2 -l \1/;s/:\([^:+]*\)$/ -p \1/')

The syntax you can use to connect through jump hosts hasn’t changed compared to previous blog posts:

• With one jump host:
  

  $ ssh login1%host1:port1+host2:port2 -l login2

• With two jump hosts:
  

  $ ssh login1%host1:port1+login2%host2:port2+host3:port3 -l login3

• With three jump hosts:
  

  $ ssh login1%host1:port1+login2%host2:port2+login3%host3:port3+host4:port4 -l login4

• etc.

Logins and ports can be omitted.

Update: Add missing port to -W flag when one is not given.

https://glandium.org/blog/?p=3631