> is to use the tunnel to transmit actual data at the application level.
Isn't that exactly what ServerAliveInterval does? The man page says: "ssh(1) will send a message through the encrypted channel". A plain TCP keepalive wouldn't count as being "through the encrypted channel".
I don't know if I would call it smoke and obfuscation, at the time systemd was not widely deployed and the ssh functionality was not as developed, so it made sense to use autossh. Now it sounds like it doesn't make sense anymore. It happens.
Isn't that exactly what ServerAliveInterval does? The man page says: "ssh(1) will send a message through the encrypted channel". A plain TCP keepalive wouldn't count as being "through the encrypted channel".