[Imap-use] Intermittent Slow Downs

[Mark Crispin]

I'm going to assume that you accurately observed that the slowdown is in 
IMAP authentication, and not in opening the mailbox or in SSL/TLS 
encryption negotiation.  This is not necessarily a good assumption, but 
since you also report that ssh is slow, that seems to bolster that 
assumption.

Given that you're also using RedHat Linux, I'll make an additional 
assumption that you are using PAM to authenticate rather than direct 
passwd file validation.

If these assumptions are correct, then the slowdown is probably in PAM. 
Are you doing any sort of authentication that requires a daemon, such as 
LDAP based authentication?

-- Mark --

http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.