Slow Connections using JDBC

I guess I'm starting to see what you guys have been talking about... Since I 
went to the new jt400.jar, getting a
connection is painful.  It's slowing down all my processes.

The coonections seem to be timing out, making a connection pool seemingly 
pointless. Is that something in setting up the
Websphere instance/application to one must enable to pool to server?

If the response I'm seeing with JDBC (20 sec minimum) is what Joe and others 
have been seeing, I can fully understand
the JDBC v. RLA debate that we've had.

Maybe it's just our architecture.  We're hosted on a out-source provider 
(Genuity running WAS on Solaris) who has a VPN
connection behind the corp firewall.  We connect via Tempe, Az, so we have to 
go to Tempe to go to Virginia and there's
not much bandwidth between us and Tempe; nor is there between Genuity 
(Virginia) and Tempe.  However, I was getting 2
sec response time before the new jar.  Since our migration to V5R1, the old jar 
didn't seem to want to work with the OS,
so going back to the old version is not an option.

Also, anyone know what classes in the com.ibm.as400.access are required for 
JDBC connectivity?  There are so many
classes, it overloads my "only 750 classes" version in VAJ.  (I've ordered the 
Developer's Toolkit from IBM, so that
will get fixed eventually....)

Do I sound frustrated? You bet.  As you all know, I am a big supporter of AS400 
(and IBM) but this one has got me
shaking my head.

dan