The following is what PAIR found...
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Thank you for contacting pair Networks.
I found another database on this database server that appears to have been
causing this problem. I have disabled that database and this should help
the overall speed of the server. Thank you for notifying me of this
problem.
Thank you,
John R.
pair Networks, Inc.
support@pair.com
> A few weeks ago I created a database which ended up on
> db100c.pair.com. The web site which used it regularly experienced very
> sluggish response and I even had problems connecting to the server via
> phpMyAdmin and heidisql.
>
> The database on db100c is a phpBB database for a sailing forum which
> is lightly used. I have a hourly cron job which creates e-mail digests
> of the posts. On db100c I would regularly see the job (which uses curl
> and outputs download times), had run times varying from 2 seconds to
> almost 60(!!!) seconds to generate a digest with a few posts.
>
> This weekend I created a new db which ended up on db3b and I migrated
> the db to the new server. I no longer see sluggish performance and the
> cron job completes consistently within 2-3 seconds.
>
> I don't know what's wrong (or who's hogging the resources on db100c),
> but that server has problems and someone needs to look at it. This no
> longer effects me, but it's a problem for you.
>
> -- Geoff