There's some new code in VM that creates an ssh tunnel. Before doing this it decides on a random socket to use, then tests to see if that socket is already bound to something else by using open-network-stream. The expectation is that the socket *won't* be bound and you'll get bounced back right away; Kyle says the call returns right away on his OpenBSD box, but on my Win98 and Win2000 machines it's kinda slow -- about 1.5 seconds on the Win98 machine, which is a 800mHz pIII. So, he suggested I post this here. Here's the function I profiled on Win98 to get the 1.5 second number: (defun gse-test() (condition-case nil (progn (open-network-stream "TEST-CONNECTION" nil "127.0.0.1" 4339)) (error nil))) (and the original thread: http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&threadm=u1qwilt5.fsf%40antislee...) I'm not on xemacs-beta, so please CC me if any other details/testing are needed.