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

I had this same problem and finally realized I had the same host entry twice on the same line:

e.g.

127.0.0.1 localhost host1 host2 host3 host4 host5 host1 host6

I removed the second instance of the same host (in the example above - host1) - and things immediately sped up.

Felt a little silly when I discovered this, but when you've got 10 long host names on the same line and you're frequently adding / removing, it can be eaisly overlooked.