[FIXED] performance slow connect of resources - bottleneck?

Issue

I have been developing and tweaking things as much as I can and know about, but am not sure where to look with regards to the following.

when going to : http://tools.pingdom.com/?url=http://www.better-holidays.com/&treeview=0&column=objectID&order=1&type=0&save=false

i can see the way all the resources load on the site. However, the connect times of the local resources (as opposed to the external google/skyscanner/addthis js) seem to be quite bad.

to make things as fast as possible, i am using the following: gzip(where neccessary/practical) cookieless domains for static content mysql query cache as well as php eaccelerator cache headers splitting resources over mare than one domain name and some more bits and pieces

the average load on the server is around 0.3 and the execution of the page(s) tends to be <0.1 sec. Furthermore its really not (yet anyway) a high traffic site

essentially I am wondering where I should look to get these times down. Could this be a scripting thing ? or something on the server setup side ? I have also checked the dns records (which I believe are fine(?)) using google pagespeed i have done everything i could possibly sensibly do (92 score)...and I have no idea where to go from here.

Any hints or suggestions would be greatly appreciated (I am - of course - also happy to provide any other info if that helps)

Current Memory Usage
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       2097152     363128    1734024          0          0          0
-/+ buffers/cache:     363128    1734024
Swap:            0          0          0
Total:     2097152     363128    1734024

System Information
Linux vps.1000db.com 2.6.18-028stab068.9-PAE #1 SMP Tue Mar 30 17:29:50 MSD 2010 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

Processor Information
Total processors: 4
Processor #1
Vendor
GenuineIntel
Name
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X3363 @ 2.83GHz
Speed
708.373 MHz
Cache
6144 KB
Processor #2
Vendor
GenuineIntel
Name
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X3363 @ 2.83GHz
Speed
708.373 MHz
Cache
6144 KB
Processor #3
Vendor
GenuineIntel
Name
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X3363 @ 2.83GHz
Speed
708.373 MHz
Cache
6144 KB
Processor #4
Vendor
GenuineIntel
Name
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X3363 @ 2.83GHz
Speed
708.373 MHz
Cache
6144 KB

Solution

ok then, it appears the main culprit were/are , some javascripts that take a long time to load/execute regardless of the order I put them in etc (slowest of them all - by far - was the addthis js . removing that one saved me about a second! on time . gee.).

also, having messed around extensively with firebug and the NET panel I got a lot closer as to what's happening. Instead of repeating it all here I think its best if i just point to What exactly is the 'Waiting for response' msg on Firebug's Net tab? where its all nicely explained . Just though I'd clear it up

Answered By - olly