running SSH through a PHP script

I am using SSH inside one of my PHP pages to run some commands on a remote server and return the output web page. In detail, I'm using SSHing 3 different times and it is taking a long time for the resulting page to load with the output from the remote command. When running top on my webserver, I see the ssh process come up, do its thing, and quit. The weird thing is that there is a 15-20 second wait in between the SSH sessions. My code is not doing anything that should cause it to take this long--it's just running these SSH commands back to back. I've tried using system(), passthru(), and backticks, and all yield the same result. If I try to run something other than SSH, there is no delay. I don't know why PHP is taking so long between the processes if clearly the process has finished. I'm running Red Hat Advanced Server 2.1, php-4.1.2, and Apache 1.3.27. There is no delay in the SSH commands when run from a shell, only through the web page. Any ideas? Thanks, James James S. Martin, RHCE Contractor Administrative Office of the United States Courts Washington, DC (202) 502-2394