Im am using YDL 3.0 and when I ssh to this box from an external location, the client seemingly timeouts AFTER I enter username and password. I have tried different ssh clients but the result is the same.

I think its due to reverse dns lookups and I would like to disable this if possible and don't really know how.

Any suggestions?

I also read that if I put a valid DNS server in /etc/resolv.conf, this may also work. Has anyone done this successfully and fixed a login delay problem?

Unfortunately, I cant try until later tonight.

Thanks in advance.

Assuming you are using Openssh, you can should set the following option in the sshd_config:
VerifyReverseMapping no