so unless it hit a cap limit to the size a namespace can be(is that possible?)

Like I said. Mod_perl and Apache aren't things I have much experience of. Just enough to know that I don't want any more.

But, I'll venture an opinion based upon the discussion so far and my knowledge of Perl in general. And say that I think it highly unlikely that this has anything to do with namespace capacities, which are unlimited within the constraints of memory availability, and which you say you are not running out of.

Without seeing what you're doing--and from the sound of things, this is far too much to dump here in a post--it is really hard to suggest what would be the cause of a sudden and prolonged slowdown like this. But, once again, I'll hazzard a guess.

I'm betting it is to do with access to the DB. Specifically, I'm betting that you're running out of db handles and are having to wait until the DBserver times out some existing connections before it will allow you to make a new connection. I guessing that you are instantiating new connections somewhere in your libraries, but never closing them. That's nothing more than a lot of supposition (I had to check back through the thread to see if you'd actually mention using a DB) and a vague memory of something similar.

The quickest way to determine if I'm right would be to go check you DB logs for a time period when one of these slowdowns has occured and see what if any relevant errors you can find.

If that is the cause, there might be a relatively easy fix. Good luck.