Slow connect with PHP SDK

Hi,

I just tried installing couchbase 1.8 on a 64-bit Debian machine and also the 1.0.0-beta SDK library according to these instructions (http://www.couchbase.com/develop/php/current). I have created a test Couchbase bucket on a dedicated port. And I copied and modified the test code:

$cb = new Couchbase("127.0.0.1:8091", null, null, "test");
$cb->set("a", 1);
var_dump($cb->get("a"));

When I run this it's kind of slow, so I put markers in the code to debug and it's the connecting time that is taking between 100-800 ms (first row). When I try the using the memcached PHP extension on the dedicated port it's connecting in under a millisecond. Is it supposed to be this slow or am I doing anything wrong?

Thanks