brand new server timing out for sshd connections

[Bill Moran]

"Jonathan Horne" <freebsd at dfwlp.com> wrote:
>
> i have a brand new server i just configured, and most of the time the
> inbound connection to sshd times out.  (connection refused).  a few times
> tho, it works fine, but after a short while, it will kick me back off.
> 
> system is based on nvidia chipsets, with the nve0 nic driver.  we switched
> in a re0 to see if that helped, but its getting the same behavior.
> 
> server is connected to a small linksys 8 port switch that is fairly new.
> 
> i would uname, but at this moment im unable to get into it, it keeps
> refusing me.  other things seem to work fine, but smtp seems to be
> affected by this same problem as well.
> 
> hmm, dns is on an active directory DNS server, could this be the crappy
> version of the AAA records?  im pretty much otherwise at a loss why this
> system isnt behaving nicely.

The symptoms sound a lot like DNS issues.  Try using the host command to
do a few forward and reverse lookups on machines that you're trying to
connect from.  If they take a long time, that's likely the problem.

-Bill