Ruby Forum Ruby on Rails > actionmailer configuration slows page loading and then error

I have the following in my environment.rb file:
ActionMailer::Base.server_settings = {
        :address => "IP_ADDRESS_GIVEN_BY_HOSTING_COMPANY",
        :port => 25
}

it causes my pages to take *forever* to load and eventually they error
out with

rails application failed to start properly

any idea what could cause this?

thanks,
gabe