Hello,

>Same scenario here.. and I exhibit the same problem.  Not sure what 
>to say it is.  I've triple checked my NAT and port forwarding 
>settings and have seen nothing wrong.
>
>Maybe it's a Mac OS X SSH thing.  I will check from other sources to be sure.
looks like that, see below...

>>Is it normal for an SSH session to take almost 2 minutes between starting
>>the attempt to connect, and getting as far as asking for a password?
definitely NO.

>>When I tested SSH at work, on the local LAN, there was never more than
>>about a 10 second delay (using MacSSH), and less using Nifty Telnet SSH.
even that is a lot.

>>If the lag time is normal, so be it (annoying, but I can deal), but I am
>>wondering if it is a sign that something still isn't right with my
>>IPNetRouter port mapping, and maybe that is delaying the connection
>>attempt.
I have no real idea what could be wrong, but
- SSHing into my HP9000/345 ( 68030/50MHz/NetBSD 1.5.2 ) from a PC under Win2k or NetBSD takes under 10sec - noticeably slower than telnet 
but not really annoying
- SSH from that HP into a Sun ( 110MHz Microsparc, Solaris 2.6, OpenSSH ) takes about the same time
- SSH from HP to PC/NetBSD is still about the same speed ( didn't really measure anything, it just doesn't feel different )
- SSH via the Sun ( it's my ISDN/NAT router ) into some big iron Sun at university is still about the same speed.

Hmm, so it looks like some MacOS X weirdness, I don't have a machine capable to run OSX ( it won't run any good on my dual 604e ) but I could test 
MacOS 8.6 if that would be any help.
Maybe SSH consumes lots of bandwidth when connecting and your internet connection is slow ? I didn't really try that, only ISDN -> university -> 
Sun-in-uni-network. What's about your ping time ? DSL seems to be notorious for long latencies, maybe SSH doesn't like that.

have fun
Michael