Is ssh appropriate for this use case?

[Christopher Morley <chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all -
I hope this is an appropriate question for this forum.

I have an application that consists of a user interface component (written
in java) and a simulation engine (written in c++). These run in separate
processes, potentially on different machines. The java process can start
one or more simulation processes, disconnect, and re-connect to them. The
simulation process can accept multiple user interface connections.
Currently the processes communicate via tcp sockets, with the c++ process
implementing a fairly standard non-blocking select-based event loop for
processing requests from the connected java process(es).

I would like to add user authentication (for connection requests to the c++
simulation component) and encryption of the socket communications. I have
been working on a small prototype based on the sshd_direct-tcpip.c example
from libssh and the jsch example app UserAuthPubKey.java using public key
(RSA) authentication.

OK, my specific questions:
1. Is ssh in general and libssh (and jsch?) appropriate choices to solve
this problem?
2. Is the direct-tcpip channel the right one to use? Is there a more
appropriate example that I can use, such as an "echo" server?
3. If there is not such an example, would offering $ persuade anyone to
produce such an example (eg a non-blocking echo server using libssh) ?

Thanks in advance for any assistance or opinions you can offer-
Chris