Symptom:

PHP loads slow on servers with php 5.2.x versions above php 5.2.6 (confirmed at least 5.2.11 and above).

Solution:

A change in the php_curl library somewhere between php 5.2.6 and php 5.2.11 introduced a resulting slowness in initialization of the php_curl library.  As a result, a multi-second delay (our testing revealed about 7 seconds) in processing any PHP page occurs if the site's php.ini file is configured to load the php_curl extension, whether functions of that library are actually called within a php page or not. 

This has been filed as a bug with php.net at http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=50410 but currently is not addressed.

The following SHARED hosting servers are running versions of PHP 5.x affected by this problem: WEB22, WEB26.  On these servers we have replaced the php_curl.dll with the php5.2.6 version of php_curl.dll, which is not impacted by the slow initialization issue.

For MANAGED hosting customers who believe they are affected by this issue, contact the support team who can review your php 5.x version, and if affected, we'll replace the php_curl.dll library with the 5.2.6 version that yields acceptable performance.