A brief background:
I have very little experience with Linux, primarily using Ubuntu 12.04 for the small amount of knowledge I do have. However, I am eager to learn more. A class I am taking is having a "war games" sort of session and Kali Linux is the distro that my team has selected to go about this.

A brief description of problem:
I am using PuTTY to remotely connect to my server hosting Kali. I SSH through 2 connections before using SSH a third time to access root of my system. However, often time SSH is very slow or non-responsive when accessing Kali. After I input ssh root@[my IP] sometimes the cursor just lingers and nothing happens. If I am fortunate I will be able to successfully connect after being allowed to input my password. My true problem arises after I connect to the Kali server. The terminal just freezes after a few commands. For instance, I entered "ls bin" and it froze. I tried again after reconnecting and it started to list the contents and then froze during the display. (It never returned to "root@[serverName]") I can only use escape sequences such as "~." to terminate the connection.

Necessary details:
Kali Linux 1.0.6, 64 bit is the version I am using
Kali Linux was installed via USB
The system accesses the internet via a wired connection
I have approximately 32% or 33% loss when I ping my IP address

Is there something I must configure in Kali to stop the connection from hanging?

P.S. - Please let me know if I am missing vital details as I don't know what other data could help give more information about my situation. Also, this is not a connection timeout. Even when I am feeding commands and typing in the terminal it will still freeze. My input is also greatly delayed and lagging.