rss / outside feeds cause speed loss

For the past couple of weeks, certain sites on the server have slowed down drastically. I thought it might be a php issue, as they are phpbased sites, however, Ive now narrowed it down to any content that is being pulled in from another site.

eg: RSS newsfeeds are the main problem.

The browser hangs on 1 bar for 7 seconds then the page loads, as if the page is being pre-loaded. I take these newsfeeds off, and page speed is back to 0.8 / 1 second.

I know it must be server or firewall related, as around the time this started to happen, Im getting bandmin cron mails stating that iptables is wrong version.

Anyone got an idea of how I can possibly fix this issue?
Thanks in advance.

 

 

 

 

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