telnet problem

[Alex Dyas]

hi,

i'm having problems with fbsd and telnetting through a firewall.
basically what happens is this - i telnet from my own machine (r2d2,FreeBSD
4.2R) in subnet A across a firewall to any one of 10 solaris machines in
subnet B.  all is fine until i leave the telnet session for more than about
15 seconds. if i then try to do anything there is a ~8 second delay before
it responds to key presses, after which all is well again.

windows and linux machines in subnet A doing the same thing don't suffer
from the same delays. telnetting directly from r2d2 to a solaris box in the
same subnet (not via the firewall) doesn't exhibit the same problem.

searches on the FreeBSD list and google.com/bsd turn up a similar problem
due to bad DNS configurations and reverse lookups. i don't think this is
the same thing as the initial connection is fine. also i've tried adding
entries at either end to no avail.

can anyone shed any light on this?

thanks in advance,

alex..