A note to self, but may benefit someone facing a similar problem.

• Problem: SSH-ing to our server was working well. But, file transfers like scp, git push were failing.

• Diagnosis: I had been thinking it was a problem with our campus network on the first night and was too sleepy to try and fix it. But things didn’t improve even after one full day. Then I asked a friend of mine, and he confirmed that he has been facing the same problem for a couple of days. I then tried file transfers to another server and it was working fine. Then I tried file transfers between the two servers and even that worked fine!

• Solution: After some googling, I figured that the problem was with a machine between me and the server. Changing the mtu to 1492 from 1500 on the server, fixed the problem. :)