I've actually run into the same thing on my SS5 (not quite 2-3 minutes, but
often in the 30-40 second range). I did a little top work, and it showed
that the problem was that sshd was using up the entire CPU for the whole
time.

Workarounds I used:

Lower the sizes of the empheral key to 512 bits. Still reasonably secure,
since it's only used for a few hours (I also set it to only regenerate
every 4 hours or so, IIRC).

If you're using DSA or RSA key login, make a new key with a smaller size
(768 bits or so) just for logging into that machine.

Use a faster cipher, like rc4 or blowfish, rather than triple-des.

Disable MAC generation (I can't remember if that is allowed by the SSHv2
spec, but you can always fall back to the SSHv1 protocol, which doesn't use
MACs).

Rebuild with better optimization flags. In particular, doing RSA/DSA
computations with code compiled for SPARCv7 will be slow, since v7 didn't
have a multiply instruction (that hurts you bad when doing public key ops).

-Jack

On Wed, 19 Jun 2002, Young, Julian wrote:

> I have a SPARCclassic 64Mb running 1.5.2 and the latest ( 1 week old)
> pkgsrc build of openssh.   when I  logon I experience inordinately long
> delays, around 2, 3 minuets,  before getting a prompt.   I get a similar
> delay, possibly longer, when generating keys.
>
> is this my classic coming to the end of it's usefull life ( performance
> expectd) , or does it sound like I have a config fault ?  Is ther anythign i
> can do to speed things up ( pre generate etc )?
>
>
> "J"
>
>