in reply to cpan shell: Big startup delays at non-chosen mirror

Hmmm.... I'm unable to access the ftp://cpan.cse.msu.edu url. My suggestion is to reconfigure and select a bunch of cpan mirrors. This will allow for backup sources.
perl -MCPAN -e shell cpan> o conf init
I'm not sure why the mirror is still being used after you removed it. I believe the mirrow list is in the config file:
${HOME}/.cpan/sources/MIRRORED.BY
You may want to try passive ftp. It didn't look like that was the problem but you could try by exporting this variable before you invoke the CPAN installer:
export FTP_PASSIVE=1