From: Randall Parker 

I have problems fetching messages from the Barkto server. What I know about
my Linux Thunderbird slowness problem:

1) The problem is specific to the Barkto server. I do not see performance
problems with newsgroups.borland.com or news.microsoft.com.

2) The problem does not affect the first message I click on.

3) Messages I click on soon after the first message take about 30 seconds to load.

4) If I click on a single message and then wait 15 minutes before clicking
on the second message then the second message loads quickly.

5) Doing dig news.barkto.com returns DNS look-ups that average around 20
msec with 87 msec as the highest number. So DNS does not appear to be the
problem.

6) Adding an entry for news.barkto.com into /etc/hosts did not help any.

7) I enabled ICMP in the Netgear FVG318 VPN Firewall box. It did not help.

8) I unchecked "Enable Stealth Mode". It did not help.

So why would fetching a second message take so long?

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5