FTP and telnet are the only two protocols that do a reverse lookup of a client when it connects. Why? Just so the daemon can write the information in a log.
That 20 second is absolutely typical of a server trying to reverse-lookup a client and getting a timeout when it tries to contact the DNS servers it thinks it knows about. I used to have this trouble when users complained "The network is slow, but only from inside the firewall. Outside the firewall access is fine." What was going on? Outside the firewall people were only using http to reach the machine, and that wasn't doing reverse-lookups, so it worked. Inside the firewall people were telnetting to the box. The box would try to reverse-lookup their clients, and would go ask a b0rken NT DNS server, which had nothing to say on the matter. That said, the reverse-lookup problem is probably what's happening to your machines. As for why the server is going to an external DNS source rather than looking at its own host tables, I can't tell from the information you provided. Also, cable connections are terrible today, and I'm tired of waiting for my text to show up after I typed it. Lauren --- Send mail for the `bblisa' mailing list to `[EMAIL PROTECTED]'. Mail administrative requests to `[EMAIL PROTECTED]'.
