rsync - Jan 2005 - rsync 2.6.2 usually hangs, FC2 on dual proc opteron machines

problem: rsync hangs most of the time but not always. When it works it finishes
within a few secs. When it hangs it will hang for 2-20 minutes but then finally
finish.

machines - both are dual processor Sun opteron with Fedora FC2

command:
rsync --verbose --checksum --archive --delete --cvs-exclude --delete-excluded 
--rsh=ssh /data/sites www1-be:/data | tee -a $log 2>&1

source tree: 5645 files in 477 directories but less than 5 files changed

[backup@stage sites]$ du -s /data/sites
372254  /data/sites
[backup@stage sites]$ du /data/sites | wc -l
477
[backup@stage sites]$ find . -type f | wc -l
5645
[backup@stage sites]$ 


$ rsync --version
rsync  version 2.6.2  protocol version 28
...
Capabilities: 64-bit files, socketpairs, hard links, symlinks, batchfiles, 
              IPv6, 64-bit system inums, 64-bit internal inums
...

$ uname -a
Linux mydomain.com 2.6.9-1.6_FC2smp #1 SMP Thu Nov 18 22:20:16 EST 2004 i686
athlon i386 GNU/Linux

Any ideas?
thanks for any help!
Tom
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