I've got a couple of ubuntu 14.04.1 boxes running on an vmware esxi rig.
On one server I am running a git-daemon:
sudo git daemon --base-path=. --enable=receive-pack --export-all --verbose
The other server is used as a git "client". Git version is 1.9.1 on both machines.
On the "first" (see further details below) request to the git-daemon a simple git pull and push with no changes takes 5 seconds to execute. If I then issue another one straight after it is fast (~80ms).
What I have noticed is that it appears to be fast whenever there is still a TCP connection in some kind of active state (TIME-WAIT) on the client machine. Once all tcp connections to the git-daemon disappear completely from (ss -atp) the next git pull or push request is slow then followed by fast once etc.
Although I don't have enough boxes to confirm, this issue appears not to happen on ubuntu 12 with git 1.7.8
Also it does not happen if I use the git client from the machine running the daemon.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Karl