Hi Werner,
if I understand you correct, then the 'x_ping' to 10.171.230.170 hangs for about 45 seconds and only then delivers the result?
If so, it may very well be a problem with the reverse DNS lookup in your network to that server 10.171.230.170. The involved MaxDB 'x_server' definitely uses reverse DNS lookup (which means that the given IP address is used to look up the server name).
To verify if this is indeed the problem cause you could try to start the 'x_server' on the database server 7.9 with the following options:
1. go to database server 7.9 (10.171.230.170)
2. execute 'x_server stop'
3. Start a new x_server without DNS lookup using 'serv directly (which normally gets called through x_server) -> 'serv -F'
Hope this still works via the 'serv -F' command; Then, just return to the client server and retry the 'x_ping' / 'sqlcli' against the 7.9 database...
Thorsten