wvdial dial on demand problems

Greetings - Since migrating to 7.1, I have an odd problem with my dial-on-demand setup using wvdial. When running fetchmail, the first server that gets contacted reports an error that a connection could not be made. The rest of the servers work fine and if I run fetchmail again, before the modem hangs up, the first server works fine. If I start wvdial manually, I don't get this same error message. And, if I start kppp, I don't have this problem. I looked at var/log/messages, but don't see anything that immediately jumps out at me as a problem. This is somewhat annoying. Any ideas on what I should be looking for? Thanks, Harry