SSH isn't playing ball nicely

18/2/2016

Recently we have switched ISPs, and with that came a monthly data allowance skyrocketing that of the measly 300GB we had previously.
I in need of a way of obscuring myself online, a VPN, and it just so happens that I have one floating around in use by a close few.
It was about damn time I used something I'm paying for.
Blah blah blah, an OpenVPN install and configuration later I was ready to connect to the service.
I live my life through IRC. I'm on it all day every day, only missing a single line of text when i'm sleeping and I do this all through IRSSI running on my server. I connect to this server via the SSH protocol and thus, if SSH were to suddenly stop working, I would literally be clueless as to what to do.
I'm using IRSSI for IRC, I can't go back to a scrub X application, ew.
But, what do you know, SSH simply does not work through my VPN... or so I thought.
I was experiencing an issue initiating an initial connection to my server, when run in verbose mode the following line is where it hung everytime:
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_ECDH_REPLY

I quickly came across this bug report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openssh/+bug/1254085
Interesting I thought; apparently other SSH clients can initiate a connection and work correctly!
So I went ahead and installed PuTTY (a GUI SSH client), and what do you know, I was able to connect without a single hitch!
So, it was at this point I knew it was specifically an OpenSSH client issue. Great, perfect, amazing.
It has been suggested to change MTU values on eth0 .. now i've tried this, however it just isn't working.
And that is that - even now, I cannot SSH into my server while using my VPN.
I bet you expected a happy ending, nope. I'm going to bed and just might cry.