<mirabilos> suggestion: use ssh connection multiplexing
<mirabilos> that way you have to only authenticate once
<mirabilos> and the ssh connection stays in the background
<mirabilos> example:
<mirabilos> yes
<mirabilos> put this into ~/.ssh/config:
<mirabilos> Host foo
<mirabilos>  Hostname foo.bar.com
<mirabilos>  User blah
<mirabilos>  Port whatever (if it's != 22)
<mirabilos>  ControlMaster no
<mirabilos>  ControlPath /home/blah/.ssh/ctl.foo
<mirabilos> then you can "start" it with
<mirabilos> ssh -fNM foo
<mirabilos> even using password auth or passwords on the key
<mirabilos> it stays in background
<mirabilos> and cvs root is then :ext:foo:/cvs
<mirabilos> (or even just foo:/cvs)
<mirabilos> instead of blah@foo.bar.com:/cvs
<mirabilos> there's an article about it on http://undeadly.org/cgi too
<mirabilos> quite old article tho. more recent openssh has advanced this feature
<mirabilos> I'm using it, since I commit often
<mirabilos> and the server is so "slow"
<mirabilos> just make sure the ControlPath is unique per remote host
<mirabilos> I name it ctl.<hostalias>
<mirabilos> where hostalias is the shortname (here: foo)
<mirabilos> manpages to read: ssh_config(5), ssh(1)
<djr> wait, this ~/.ssh/config is supposed to be on server or client?
<mirabilos> client

Also, see Speeding up SSH Control Master