Transaction speed

I have the following situation:

Test database inside our network, accessed with pgAdminIII.
When I INSERT records into a table (3000-5000 in one transaction) it takes between 2.5 - 5 seconds. No worries there.

Production database that is hosted remotely, accessed with pgAdminIII.
When I INSERT records into a table (only 500 or so) it never completes (I've waited for 30 minutes before). It will take a transaction of up to 200 statements, but it takes 3-5 minutes.

Has anyone seen this situation before, and have a reason as to why this may be happening? Is there something that needs to change on the production server? Is it a tcpip latency issue that breaks the connection? (I'm guessing now)

Thanks in advance,
Derrick