OT: why are LAMP sites slow?

[EP]

> > The server is slow to respond to requests.  Browser rendering is
> > independent of the server architecture and "slow to be fetched from
> > the server" sounds like it means low network speed.  I'm talking 
> about
> > the very familiar experience of clicking a link and then waiting,
> > waiting, waiting for the page to load.  You rarely see that happen
> > with Ebay or Google.  It happens all the time with Wikipedia.
> 
> This has a lot to do with the latency and speed of the connecting
> network. Sites like Ebay, Google, and Amazon are connected
> to internet backbone nodes (for speed) and are cached throughout
> the network using things like Akami (to reduce latency)...


Akami for services, or better yet, cacheing hardware such as NetCache.  Frequently requested data doesn't even have to come from the server disks/database - it's sent from the NetCache.