IMO a better way to do this (because it will continue to work with scp/sftp, does not require starting up a perl process and you can add other options with little effort) is to use the ~/.ssh/config file. For example, put this into the file:

box1: 
    User alexk
    Hostname boxwithlongname
[download]

and on the commandline:

ssh box1
[download]

and it will do exactly the same thing. You can also add options such as compression, private key to use, X11 forwarding etc. in the same file, see man ssh_config for the details.