I also experience a few seconds - 5 maybe, not 15 - when connecting to my Xserve via SSH before it prompts for authentication. Could be something similar... Or could it be something related to comparing/searching for keys?

Dunno, cuz I'm not that smart. Anybody out there that can shed light on this for us dummies? (Or should I say, this dummy?)

I _think_ this is delay is a built-in security measure: it slows down brute-force password attempts. I'm pretty sure that's why it typically takes a few seconds for a password to get rejected, anyways.

One way to troubleshoot the problem when connecting via SSH in the shell is to use the "-v" switch to get some debugging output. Use more v's for more verbosity, up to "-vvv".

You may find that it's trying a few different authentication methods and failing before it finds one that succeeds.

-Ken