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Do you have large files with long history (lot of versions on
repository) ? Are they binary or ASCII ? Namely, CVS first does the diff
of the whole bunch of files for each one and during the process you see
nothing - yet the full file transfer is being performed at that time. It
can last a little bit longer if you have large binary files in
comparission to the small ASCII files. Also, try use the -z option
(suggested compression value is 3, thus -z3). As for my experience,
there is no need to use ssh compression if you use -z .