Very slow login/logout with Portable Home Directories

I've set up Portable Home Directories for our department so that people can work from different computers if need be (also, I think our network is too slow to use network home directories). However, the login times are excruciating - some users report average 45 minute login times. None of these users are moving huge files or anything, and even if I just log someone out (completing the sync) and then log back in, the login will be very slow.
If I disconnect the computers from the network, obviously it logs in quickly because it can't connect to the server, but I don't want to do that (or disable login/logout sync altogether). I tried removing things from the login/logout sync rules, but often the sync takes time just on 'Finishing' or 'Stopping', so I don't think that it's any particular files that take a lot of time.
On a possibly related note, for some reason our computers all take perhaps 30 seconds to get an IP address when starting up, waking up from sleep, etc. Is there any reason why the computer would need to be doing this repeatedly? Especially on logout, this wouldn't seem relevant, but I've seen that mentioned in other threads.
Thanks in advance for any advice,
Greg

Apple Discussions has a special forum just for Portable Home Directories, you might want to search and/or post your question there:
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1249

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