Icouldn't understand why on one system it took a few minutes to get the SSHlogin prompt when connecting to other systems. The other systems all had the UseDNS parameter set to no, which almost always resolves the login prompt delay.
The reason is Ubuntu and perhaps Debian and other distributions /etc/nsswitch.conf file
Edit yours to have the "hosts" line like so (notice that files and dns are the primary resolution choice........