extremely slow to ssh out from my machine

[michael <linux@networkingnewsletter.org.uk>]

when i 'ssh' from machineA to machineB it seems to take about 20secs
before I get a prompt on machineB; from machineB to machineA it is also
instantaneous. A `strace ssh machineB` from machine A gives four entries
of
     5.000503 socket(PF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM, IPPROTO_IP) = 4
Could somebody enlighten me what this is doing and why it is likely to
take 5 seconds?

machineA is running Debian 2.4.18-bf2.4 with unstable updates and sits
behind a router

machineB is running 2.4.27-1-686-smp with testing updates

Thanks,

-- 
Michael Bane
Atmospheric Physics Group
University of Manchester