Ok. Heres an update. The database server and file servers were both linked via a public connection and by hostname/servername. Since an idiot at the server company gave us servers in different rooms and not VLAN or cross connected. This was done despite the fact that linking the servers for a db and fileserver setup was indicated on the same ticket.

On top of that the ports were only 10 mbps ports so the pages were taking LOOONG to generate (from like 2 - 10 FULL SECONDS! ) Once the ports were opened to 100 mbps ports the pages generated in like .4 - .7 seconds. This was better and acceptible compared tot he 10mbps scenario but was still not optimal performance.

From there we got the servers moved to the same rack and cross connected with an additional PCI intel NIC and crossover ips. private ips used for vbulletin db hostname in config. The perfomance is much much better than all the above scenarios and better than when we had the db on the same server as the files. The pages load in .1 -.3 seconds and it is speed imporvement is very noticible and it is working great. Thanks erwin, alexi and others.

Just a follow-up note that none mentioned for benefit of using IP verses name - DNS. If your DB requests are not as fast as your DNS cache timeout on your web server (and your DB connection is not persistent), then each time the Web server's DNS cache expires, it has to resolve it again. Since DNS is a shared facility, even at large hosts, you are adding time to the connection.

We use hostnames for everything internally. We have a common /etc/hosts to save our resolver from needing to pull the information constantly. It's much easier to remember db6 instead of 10.0.0.48 :)