I have 2 linux machines connected with a crossover ethernet cable - one machine has a 100mb nic, the other has a 10mb nic.
When i try to telnet or ftp between the two computers, it takes a very long time for it to work - telnet will connect, then it will take about 5 minutes for the login: prompt to come up. this is going either way, on either computer. ftp is the same way, it says connected but takes about 5 mins for login to come up.
during this five minutes, top shows that in.telnetd/in.ftpd are using less than 1% cpu (or none) and less than 1% memory.
once you are able to log in, both ftp and telnet perform really well in terms of bandwidth and speed in file transfers and running programs.

One computer is a p3 566mhz w/ 128mb ram and 100mb NIC, the other is a 486 8-mhz w/ 48mb ram and 10mb NIC. both are brand new, clean slackware 7.0 installes, with a kernel update to 2.2.17. (i have this problem using both the supplied 2.2.13 kernel and custom-built 2.2.17 kernels)

When running, both computer have no other major processes running in the background - they are 99% idle. Also, both machines are using about 12mb of ram.

does anyone know how to fix this so that i can login faster?

thanks,

saai