SquirrelMail slow, VERY slow

[Doug Stewart <dstewart atl lmco com>]

Howdy all,
I've been tasked with setting up a SquirrelMail IMAP install for our 
intranet.  My users have been seeing *extremely* lengthy login times, 
sometimes on the order of 45 seconds - 1.5 minutes.  (The webserver 
running SM and the IMAP server are two separate boxes). Also, several 
users are encountering the following issue when trying to log in:

ERROR:
ERROR : Connection dropped by imap-server.
Query: EXAMINE "INBOX"

I have scoured the internet[s] for answers to my performance question as 
well as an answer to the INBOX issue and have thus far come up empty.

Anyone have any success stories/tips/sites to point me to other than the 
reliably-overloaded SquirrelMail site?

I'm running the RedHat-supplied squirrelmail-1.4.3a-9.EL3, in case 
anyone asks.

Thanks.

--
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Doug Stewart
Systems Administrator/Web Applications Developer
Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Labs
dstewart atl lmco com