I want to start this new blog talking about a problem I faced few days ago, working with a web application developed using PHP and MySql. Using the application users experienced unexplained and random slowdowns in the production environment running on a dedicated server of the italian provider Aruba. The same application with the same database worked properly on my development machine. After trying various solutions, I solved the problem changing the connection string: instead of using the public IP of the server, I used the address of the loopback interface 127.0.0.1 and it started working again.