Domain name resolution is a very common cause of delays when doing anything over the network whether its accessing a web page or connecting to SQL Server. Everything uses DNS. TCP/IP works with IP addresses and not friendly names. When using names you have to have a way of resolving names to IP addresses and thats what DNS does. If your DNS is wrong then you'll get delays and also potentially odd results. For instance if you have multiple DNS servers configured you may find that occasionally...(read more)