Speed Issue

[Derek Crudgington]

Here is my setup:

server1 - management
server2 - data/api
server3 - data/api

server1 and server2 are in the same location, server3 is in a different location, which is slower network.

whenever they are all 3 up and running, the speed is slow when doing query's on server2.

whenever i shutdown server3, the speed increases.. and it works at a normal speed with only server1 and server2 running.

why would i see an increase in speed if i shut down server3 and i'm only doing queries on server2? does mysql cluster still query server3 (if it is up) when i do a query on server2?

any help would be much appreciated.