Using SSH to connect to some servers can introduce long delays from the time the command is issued until the connection with the server is established. This hint describes two potential problems and offers a solution.
In connecting to a local server, my ssh command would take about 20 seconds to complete. Non-Macintosh clients would not see this delay. After searching for the web and slogging through a number of posts that suggested how to change the server to fix ssh delays, I pieced together enough information to find out how to change my client configuration to solve the problem.
The first, and largest cause of delays, was my client and the server working to authenticate me using 'GSSAPI' (Kerberos) authentication. That seemed to be a good 15-18 seconds of the delay. I fixed this problem by adding a configuration file for my user that disabled GSSAPI authentication for the host. The file I added is ~/.ssh/config and I created it to read:
Host -host-name-here- GSSAPIAuthentication no GSSAPIKeyExchange no
Host -host-name-here- GSSAPIAuthentication no GSSAPIKeyExchange no AddressFamily inet
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20111020115417965