I'm using SVN version 1.6.6 (r40053) via the command-line in Ubuntu 10.04 and connecting to a remote repository over HTTP that is in the local network. For a while, it worked fine, but has recently become very slow for any operation that requires communication with the repository, however it does eventually work after several minutes (~3m for svn up). Looking at Wireshark, it appears to be taking a full minute between the HTTP auth denied and the subsequent request containing credentials.
The issue is local to my machine because other coworkers running Ubuntu are not having the issue and I've tried using my credentials from another machine and it was very fast.
I tried deleting the .subversion folder in my home directory and checking everything out fresh, but it didn't help.
Update: I think it's auth related. When I check out SVN repositories off of the Internet over HTTP (from Google Code, for example), everything is very fast until I do something that requires a password. Before prompting for the password for the first time, it stalls for at least a minute.
Update 2: I set the neon-debug-mask in the SVN settings (in /etc/subversion/servers under [Global]) to 138 and it seems to spending a lot of time on 'auth: Trying Basic challenge...'
Best Answer
In my case, it took a lot of time in the phase "Doing DNS lookup on XXX...", where XXX is my HTTP proxy configured at ~/.subversion/servers. In this case, the repository was listed in the "HTTP proxy exceptions", but Subversion did the DNS lookup anyway. It works, but with a very long delay (about 2 mins). The solution was just replace the XXX by the IP addresss.