Hi Michael,
I looked into the link. Note that I don't have ssh 5.6+ to use ControlPersist feature. Tried with paramiko, but with no change.
#1 In my first query, I had minimized the problem to the copy module. Copy module takes ~5 secs while scp takes < 1sec. I tried several options, but with no outcome. Can you help me in solving this?
#2 I am on Debian squeeze and hence there is no ssh version > 5.5. I don't want to mess with the setup, as I login to my external servers. If I compile ssh 5.6+, can I provide to Ansible the path to the binary?
I look forward to your inputs.