I run gentoo on my laptop, as well as on a clunky old(ish) server, which I use for various development & backup purposes. Software-wise, the two machines are pretty much the same, except the server doesn’t run a window manager (although it does have X installed, since I use it occasionally for encoding and so on) — so from a configuration perspective, they’re also relatively similar. However, ssh between the boxes is very different. ssh from the server to the laptop is instantaneous, ssh from the laptop to server is also fine, apart from a -really- slow initial connection (anything from a ‘zippy’ 10 seconds, to a glacial 30 second turnaround). It hasn’t been annoying enough to look into, but finally googled around to find the answer on (of all places) macosxhints.com. The solution was to add my ISP’s name server to /etc/resolv.conf on the laptop, as using only the local router appears to be causing the slow initial lookup and therefore connect. Back to instantaneous connections.