found 294148 1:5.1p1-5 found 294148 1:5.5p1-2 Yahoo! extensively uses SSH port forwarding (mostly Remote) to pierce corp vs prod firewalls. Being able to use UNIX sockets would be useful for remote IPC, to simplify the issue of talking to remote programs. Yes, They're a RHEL shop, but the feature itself is still useful. Even so, this is my personal opinion, and not necessarily the opinion of Yahoo.