OS X :: AFP Connection Response Time Extremely Slow

I'm running Snow Leopard on a Mac Pro. I often connect to a Linux server sitting at the office through afp. It connects fine, but very quickly the response time of the folders becomes extremely slow. Granted there are fire walls and network magic and whatnot between here and that server that don't exist inside the network at the office. But I feel as if this is a more recent phenomena. Connections in this way have been a little sluggish in the past, but now it's consistently unbearable--beach balls and unresponsive Finder windows. I have an internal RAID pair, and extra drives, and shared connections all talking to this machine.

Which clearly causes the occasional "hiccup" in the system. Like sometimes I wait for folders to load, or like VMWare pausing for a few seconds when trying to access some of the Mac drives. But, for the most part, the system works fast and fine. I've tried to watch the Activity Monitor while accessing the Finder windows on the server. And, all that I've learned is that FireFox is big resource hog, and that Finder barely registers any CPU effort when I click into those drives. Speakeasy tells me I'm getting around 14 Mbps for network speed. The server itself seems to be running fine (according to top and snappy terminal responses). [URL]