[CentOS] sendmail delay in presenting banner

Sun Mar 23 15:39:34 UTC 2014
Gregory P. Ennis <PoMec at PoMec.net>

I am using a Centos 6.5 machine as a mail server with sendmail as the
MTA.  I have a problem with a delay of sendmail presenting its banner so
that the process of accepting e-mail can begin.  The log files
demonstrate as much as a 2 minute delay between the connection and the
banner presentation.  

#telnet Mail.DOMAIN.com 25
Connected to mail.
Escape character is '^]'.
< two minute delay before the next line is presented>
 h220 Mail.DOMAIN.com. ESMTP Sendmail 8.14.4/8.14.4; Sun, 23 Mar 2014
10:17:44 -0500

Log entries on the mail server for the above connection:
Mar 23 10:16:05 Mail sendmail[31229]: NOQUEUE: connect from
NAME.DOMAIN.com [10.0.0.187]
Mar 23 10:17:44 Mail sendmail[31229]: AUTH: available mech=GSSAPI
CRAM-MD5 DIGEST-MD5, allowed mech=EXTERNAL GSSAPI DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5
LOGIN PLAIN

I have made the observation that if I put in the following line in the
access file the 2 min delay goes away

Connect:10.0.0.187                          RELAY

Obviously I can not set up a relay for every ip address, but this does
solve the problem for internal network delivery of mail to the mail
server.

I am using named for local dns service and have not been able to
identify any errors or problems.

When I evaluate 

nslookup NAME.DOMAIN.com 127.0.0.1  I appropriately get 10.0.0.187

So far I am stumped on this problem, if any of you have suggestions I
would appreciate your help

 Greg Ennis