SQL Slow Response from remote DB

Question

I have two sites of which I am executing SQL querys and updates to an Oracle DB. Both sites have the identical code. I am querying against an Oracle 9.0.2 DB. I have tried using both the 8i JDBC Driver and the 9i JDBC Driver. At one site which is closer to the DB site the response is 10 times as fast as the response from my second site. I've had the network administrators to test the network between sites for packet latency. The results were 40ms to pass packets between sites. Traceroute also showed the same response times. I have employed Oracle's assistance with tuning the database optimally. This has not improve the response time. I thought that the problem might be with my SQL so I created the following simple test and the response times were the same. Any thoughts as to were the problem might lie? Your help is much appreciated.
Site 1 response time: 4ms
Site 2 response time: 137ms
CODE:
try{
Class.forName("oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver");
con=DriverManager.getConnection(url,name,pw);
if(con!=null){
System.out.println("Got Connection");
Statement s = con.createStatement();
long begintime = System.currentTimeMillis();
int bt = (int)begintime;
ResultSet rs = s.executeQuery("select sysdate from dual");
long endtime = System.currentTimeMillis();
int et = (int)endtime;
rs.next();
Time t = rs.getTime("sysdate");
System.out.println("Time: " + t.toString());
System.out.println("Time to Retrieve Records: "+ (endtime - begintime) + "ms");
rs.close();
con.close();
catch(SQLException sql){
System.err.println("SQL Error: " + sql.getMessage());
sql.printStackTrace();
catch(ClassNotFoundException cnfe){
System.err.println("SQL Error: " + cnfe.getMessage());

Answer 1

If it was me I would write a client server socket tester and run it on both machines. And do some tests that run individual and burst transmissions throughout the day. You could do the same thing without code by manually FTP'ing some large files between the systems. But that will have more of a real impact on the system however.
A simple trace route is only going to show a problem if it exists at a particular point in time.