SCP from Windows destroys SSH connections

Hi, I’m trying to write a publish script that copies a bunch of files over from a Windows machine to a Linux droplet (Ubuntu). I can successfully SSH into the remote Linux machine and can also run small (single file) scp commands to copy files over.

When I run a recursive copy scp.exe -r [source dir] [remote dir] of a few megabytes, all SSH connections into my droplet stall. Eventually the original scp command times out with the error message:

ssh: connect to host IPADDRESS port 22: Connection timed out

I’m unable to reconnect to the droplet over ssh for about 5 minutes.

Some things I’ve noticed and tried:

• Websites running on the droplet continue to be accessible during the freeze, so the droplet is still alive,.
• I’ve tried changing the MTU on the remote droplet and it didn’t make a discernible difference.
• I tried to look at the ssh logs on the remote server and noticed that the scp commands create connections to the server, but never close them. When I issue an ssh command, these connections are closed after use.
• I have adjusted the MaxSessions and MaxStartups number in the /etc/ssh../sshd_config file (and restarted using sudo systemctl restart ssh.service)

Anyone know anything else i can try?