slow telnet

[serge@egel2.med.umn.edu (Serge M. Egelman)]

hi,
    I finally got my router up and running.  For a while I've been having
problems with scripts and pppd, so I found this cool program called wvdial.
It works great.  However I now have to problems:

1:  in order to dial on demand, I need to either telnet in to the routing
box or physically run the program from there.  Is there a way to run it with
having to launch telnet each time?  This wouldn't bother me so much if it
weren't for my second problem:

2: when I launch telnet, it takes literally 2 minutes to connect!!  In
reality, it should only take a second or so.  Is this a routing problem or
what?  I am able to launch telnet from that machine and telnet to itself
either by putting in 'localhost' or by the dummy ip (in this case
192.168.1.1).

thanks,

serge