Long pause using Berkeley networking

[Dave Martindale]

We have a few new A/UX systems, configured for Berkeley networking and
NFS but not Yellow Pages.

Whenever I run a Berkeley-style networking command (rcp, remsh), there
is a delay of several seconds before anything happens.  Looking at the
Ethernet wire itself, there is an initial short packet sent out, with
no reply.  Four seconds later, there is suddenly a flurry of packets
exchanged and the results appear.

I don't have an Ethernet monitor, so I know when packets are sent but
not what is in them.  However, it does appear that the Mac sends the
first packet, which is ignored by everybody.  Then, 4 seconds later (by
the stopwatch), it sends another packet, and at that point the remote
machine responds.

Does anybody know what is going on here?  Is the Mac looking for a
Yellow Pages server to look up the remote host name, even though there
is no "+" line in /etc/hosts?

There is no such delay when accessing a file via NFS, so IP and the
Ethernet hardware are not to blame.  However, it does take a very long
time to mount and unmount NFS filesystems (about 4.5 seconds each),
causing me to further suspect something in the host lookup process.

The problem is definitely on the Mac somewhere - the delay is there
running any remote command to or from the Mac, but not between any
other combination of our machines.

Does anyone else run TCP and NFS without YP?

The other machines are:
	VAX 11/780,     4.3BSD
	IRIS 2400T,     SGI 3.6 unix
	IRIS CS16       SGI 4D1-3.0


Dave Martindale
{mcgill-vision,watmath}!onfcanim!dave