How to improve initial connectivity to MTS

[Guest_imported]

We have a 3-tier app utilizing MTS. In our dev server which is within our local area network (MTS and SQLServer also running from the same server), the performance is OK. However, when we tried to access that same application from a remote server in a WAN (MTS and SQL Server running from 2 servers but thru the same network segment), the initial connectivity degraded drastically. The weird thing about it is that only the initial connection had this problem. Once you have establish connection, data retrieval/updates is quite fast.

Would anyone have any idea on how to optimize MTS/SQLServer/NT so that the initial connection won't be as bad? Thanks.