I've actually experienced this, but I don't know if it's related.

In my case, installing linux on a laptop and while everything was fine, there was an unexplained network delay. What ultimately fixed it (and I really don't know why) is I had to fix the time on my system clock to the right date/time and then got ntp setup and working correctly. My system clock was far in the past. I THINK (but don't know) that the root cause was in certificate validation. Perhaps hiccups because the certs were issued in the future?