What the heck is gssapi-with-mic?

Question

Debugging a Nagios warning on ssh, I've discovered that gssapi-with-mic is causing long lags in authentication. I've turned it off, but what exactly am I missing? I gather that GSSAPI is a tool for authentication, but what about the -with-mic part?

Answer 1

Message Integrity Code:

The term message integrity code (MIC) is frequently substituted for the term MAC, especially in communications, where the acronym MAC traditionally stands for Media Access Control.