Weird ssh behavior when listing folder

Question

I was trying to get a file from my home PC using SSH, from my Android phone - connection went fine, but directory listing hanged. I've tried then using a PC with ubuntu, in nautilus - hang again when listing files. Then, I ended up summarizing it in the following commands on the terminal:

john@pc1~> ssh doe@pc2.x.net -p 2245
nill@pc2.x.net's password: *****
Welcome to Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (GNU/Linux 3.2.0-34-generic x86_64)
Last login: Fri Dec  7 15:00:02 2012 from ****
nill@pc2.x.net:~$ ls
Área de Trabalho  Documentos  examples.desktop  index.html  Música   Ubuntu One  why.txt
cond_121203.txt   Downloads   Imagens           Modelos     Público  Vídeos      workspace
nill@pc2.x.net:~$ ls -lsh > this_works.txt
nill@pc2.x.net:~$ ls -lsh
total 88K
4,0K drwxr-xr-x 2 nill nill 4,0K Nov 25 22:21 Área de Trabalho
...

... the client hangs again - CTRL+C or CTRL+D cannot leave the connection or stop the LS process. Issuing 'cat' on the generated text file (trough ssh) does not hang, neither it have any special content. After some re-connections to make tests, I foun out that 'top' behaves the same, hanging the client.

Any ideas what it could be? (client is ubuntu 12.04 too, btw, but also hanged an android client)

Answer 1

I guess it's a MTU problem: large packets will not pass. Try lowering the MTU of your network interface to 1450 (it's probably set at 1500 by default). If it works, try values between 1450 and 1500. 1492 will often work.