Why do POP3 connections take so long, but once the connection is established all is well?
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In some configurations POP3 needs to generate random data for use by
APOP authentications. This can lead to delays if "/dev/random" does
not have enough entropy immediately available.

If you don't need or want support for APOP, you can either compile
SASL with "--disable-checkapop", or you can disable APOP support in
pop3[proxy]d at runtime by setting "allowapop:0" in imapd.conf(5).

Otherwise, since there isn't a strong need for high-quality random
numbers with SASL, there are two options for dealing with this -- link
/dev/urandom to /dev/random. Alternatively, recompile SASL with "--
with-devrandom=/dev/urandom". It's preferred to do the latter, as it
avoids affecting other applications.