apache - slow initial load?

[scorpion]

Has anybody experienced the issue where when you visit a URL for your site there is like a 3 second pause/lag time until you see anything (the page starts to load) in the browser but then the page loads normally at a good rate? The exact behaviour is you see the first green bar in IE 6 for about 3 seconds before you are transferred to the page.

This initial delay could cause surfers to think your site is down!

I'm running apache 2 and linux 8 on a dedicated box. Any thoughts on this phenomenon?

Is there a way to improve the initial responsiveness of the page upon clicking a link to your site or typing the URL in?

[bakedjake]

Do you have your apache set up to do reverse resolution of IP addresses so that it is logging names in the logfiles (as opposed to just logging IPs)?

If so, kill it. You'll see the behavior you're seeing now, and it will only get worse as system load increases.