Aservices stalling

[Charles Fulton <cf352197@oak.cats.ohiou.edu>]

I've got a system serving up my DSL connection (RH 6.2), running DHCP and doing
IP forwarding.  The system will sometimes take a long time to respond to
DHCP requests and ssh logins almost as if the services have gone to sleep.
DHCP will give the IP address and the requesting system has access to the internet
but 'ifup' doesn't report that the process has completed for an extended period.
SSH will ask for the password and then hang.  If I try again after a bit it works
just fine.

Once the connection is established everything works like it should.  Why might this
system be acting in such a way?

Charlie