slow ssh response

[punter]

I don't know why, but my computer is slow at responding to calls.
it's particularly noticable with ssh, it takes around 20 seconds for a password prompt, when it should take no more than 2 seconds ...

what could be the cause ??
I've allowed only SSH protocol 2, disabled computers response to pings and have key based SSH for some external hosts, but key-based authentication is not enforced.

what do you think ???????

[teknomage1]

It really depends on how many computers are between you and your target. If you hadn't disabled ping (and if disabling ping weren't necessary these days) I'd say just ping the system and see if maybe it's just a slow network connection.

[punter]

nah, i'm afraid it's worse than that.
the following scenario pushed me to make such a post, actually:

i connected my computer directly to another via cross cable for some file transfers.
using winscp or putty on the other computer showed slow response.
to be more specific, winscp prompted that no reply is received and whether user wants to retry or not.
after asking for retry, it would work, as if the reply to the first request had just came back.

moreover during file transfers winscp checks keys on an interval basis.
this key checking failed all the times, winscp coming back and saying 'host key checking failed'.

i don't know why, but i'm certain my computer delays considerably in the first response to a ssh call !!!!

[anderiv]

You might try putting entries in the /etc/hosts file so that your server is able to resolve the hostname of your client box.

I've seen issues like this before when there were DNS issues...

[MWraith]

Yes, i've had this problem before and it was indeed DNS related. If you use -v when connecting you will have more of an idea what's going on, you will most likely see that it is hanging when trying to resolve the ip address.