[Solved] Sometimes Long Time to First Byte Time for the first request

[pmeenan]

It could also be an apache configuration issue if your are running out of clients to handle the requests. If you are running prefork MPM then each connection ties up one of your clients for the life of the connection, even if it is just sitting around (which is a problem with keep-alive).

Some of the other MPM's are more sane but depending on how you have php integrated may not work. These days I usually run nginx or varnish in front of Apache (on the same box) if I absolutely HAVE to run Apache.