Teeny tiny detail: > just establishing an ssh connection doesn't take multiple seconds That's almost certainly power saving on the WiFi. Annoying but fixable.

Teeny tiny detail: > just establishing an ssh connection doesn't take multiple seconds That's almost certainly power saving on the WiFi. Annoying but fixable. Seems to be on by default, and a `/sbin/iwconfig wlan0 power off` line in rc.local should fix it.