Did it take 11 minutes to do a line count? This wasn't across a network, was it? If so, then do the work local to where the data resides. I have had success

Did it take 11 minutes to do a line count? This wasn't across a network, was it? If so, then do the work local to where the data resides. I have had success munging textual data by making sure it stays compressed (lzop & pigz are good).