Yes, it's very possibly the resolver. This is quite common. If you log in to the server can the server look up host names using nslookup? That is, is your /etc/resolv.conf properly configured? If so, also check to make sure the "hosts" entry in /etc/nsswitch.conf looks like this:
hosts: files dns
This means the resolver will first look at /etc/hosts and then use a DNS query. If your ip address is not in /etc/hosts and it can not do a reverse lookup by DNS on the server then it still might be a little slow unless you add an entry for your client's IP address and name in /etc/hosts on the server. That would at least be a good way to test if it is a resolver issue.
Actually rather than using "nslookup" to test if it's a resolver issue you should use "getent" like so:
getent hosts xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
Which should return a host name, or at least return very quickly with no result if there is no reverse record.
Another thing it could be is that the server is trying to do an "ident" lookup on your client when you attempt to connect to it. If you configured a firewall on your client recently it may be causing the problem. Is that possible?
[ October 10, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]