>>The hosting company tech support told me this:
>>
>>"There is always a startup delay with any ASP.NET site if it does not receive constant traffic.
>>
>>After 20 minutes of inactivity server unload application domain, any subsequent hit will trigger application reload and ASP.NET JIT compilation which results in 5 to 10 second delay."
>
>I know that's the line with DNN apps, but it just doesn't happen with my homegrown ASP.NET apps. Perhaps I'm just lucky, but I think the real reason is some bad code in DNN.

I'm still pretty new to .Net and DNN, so what you say may be true. I just found the following on a discussion board:

"In IIS 5.0, the processModel element has an idleTimeout setting (defaults to
infinite) that specifies how long the worker process can be idle (no
requests) before it is shut down. If you're on IIS 5, check that.

In IIS 6.0, the app pool has several settings that can cause the application
to unload. On the Recycling tab, you can configure how the process is
recycled. There is also a setting on the Performance tab that will recycle
after 20 (default) minutes of inactivity. (This setting is the equivalent
to the idleTimeout on IIS 5."

and another thing I just read is if a virus scanner updates the date on the web.config file, it will unload too. http://blogs.msdn.com/tess/archive/2006/08/02/686373.aspx

Can the reverse be true? Could you have something running on the machine with your "homegrown asp.net apps" that makes it think it's getting activity and so it does not unload?