Speed question -- why are some servers slower than others?

[Michael G. <ph...@mg...>]

First of all, let me say thanks to the developers. This is a cool tool. And
as a beginning PHP coder, I was thrilled with how quickly I could get it al=
l
to work.

But here=B9s my question. I=B9ve encountered BIG speed differences depending on
the server I=B9m using. On my local machine running Apache on Mac OS X
(Jaguar), the speed test page runs 200-300 ms per METAR. That=B9s also true o=
f
one of the web hosting services I use (running a Windows 2000 server).
Unfortunately, on the host I intend to use for this project (running Apache
on Linux), it takes forever =8B over 10 seconds per METAR. The page I=B9m tryin=
g
to host there (which displays temperatures for eight locations) takes over =
a
minute to load. Unacceptable, obviously.

Perhaps someone can suggest what gives here. Is the slow service running a
crappy PHP parser or is its connection to the METAR site slow for some
reason? Or is it something else? I have not changed the default configs, no=
r
have I (yet) cached the data to a database.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again for this wonderful piece of software.

m=20

P.S. -- Apologies to the moderator for the earlier post; I hadn=B9t realized
you needed to subscribe first!