ssh -X (X11 forwarding) java swing application has slow drop down lists

Question

Symptoms:

• click on a drop down list, it takes ~14 seconds for the list of all options under it to display
• all other UI elements are interactive; there's no visible delay
• takes only 14ms to ping the host I am sshing into

How can I speed the the responsiveness of the drop down lists?

Commands that I ran:

ping <destination host>
PING <destination host> (<destination ip>) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from <destination host> (<destination ip>): icmp_seq=1 ttl=50 time=16.4 ms


ssh -X <destination host>
java -cp <class path stuff> <class with main method that initializes the UI>

Client Machine Information:

ssh -V
OpenSSH_6.6.1p1 Ubuntu-2ubuntu2, OpenSSL 1.0.1f 6 Jan 2014
cat /etc/*-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=14.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=trusty
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS"

Server Machine Information:

sshd -V
sshd: illegal option -- V
OpenSSH_5.9p1 Debian-5ubuntu1, OpenSSL 1.0.1 14 Mar 2012
usage: sshd [-46DdeiqTt] [-b bits] [-C connection_spec] [-c host_cert_file]
        [-f config_file] [-g login_grace_time] [-h host_key_file]
        [-k key_gen_time] [-o option] [-p port] [-u len]

java -version
java version "1.8.0_25"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_25-b17)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.25-b02, mixed mode)
cat /etc/*-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=12.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=precise
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 12.04 LTS"

Answer 1

I found a temporary solution. I have two monitors (laptop and external monitor). I disabled the laptop monitor and it runs smoothly now. This solution is based upon this post: Workaround for Slow Java Swing Menus .