Connecting via FTP appears slow

[avara]

And I don't think this is my imagination. Sometimes when connecting via FTP, it takes a long time for the deamon to actually respond to the connection request. Once connected, everything is lightning fast though.

Any ideas?

[feanor]

Are the nameservers for the server in question configured correctly? (/etc/resolv.conf) Does the server's base hostname resolve globally and does the server's base IP (eth0) have reverse dns properly configured for it?

These things can all contribute to what you've mentioned.