How can I eliminate slow resolving/loading of localhost/virtualhost (a 2-3 second lag) on Mac OS X Lion?

Question

Since setting up my development environments on Mac OS X Lion (brand new macbook air purchased in January 2012), I have noticed that resolving to a virtual host is very slow

Answer 1

Ensuring that the host names are defined at the beginning of the file made the difference for me. By default the line 127.0.0.1 localhost is already at the beginning, just add your entries on the same line.