The problem isn't ssh2. the problem is the OpenSSL guts used by
OpenSSH's ssh2. OpenSSH sshd (using ssh version 2) was slow logging in
on my Ultra 5 - I installed pkgsrc/net/ssh2-nox11, killed openssh
sshd, put sshd2 in its place, and it's almost as fast as rsh now to
login. And this is with the openssh ssh client - just the ssh.com
server.

I've seen mention of OpenSSL being horribly slow on non-solaris sparcs
before, but running fine on Solaris. I don't remember exactly where,
but IIRC it was an article comparing performance in OpenBSD, NetBSD,
and Solaris on an Ultra 5. The benchmarks from OpenSSL were horrible
under the BSDs, and good on Solaris - the author had to try pretty
hard to get results under solaris that were as bad as the ones under
BSD, from what I saw.

I suspect OpenSSL has some issues with sparc (be it 32 or 64) in general.

-Sean