Can you guys try starting it without longpoll? Maybe the longpoll switch code is responsible which is new since 2.1.0
cgminer's stale rate should be exceptionally low even without longpoll, but it will be slightly higher.
Seems implausible, as I had the problem with 2.1.0.
And as reported earlier, the problem, in addition to being highly intermittent, is not persistent. My current session, which started about 16 hours ago and had three rashes of the problem in its first eight hours or so, has since been cruising fine for eight hours. At this writing there are 111 instances of "LONGPOLL detected" in the log.
But, ever cooperative, I just now restarted with no-longpoll.