When the AllowOverride directive is activated, the Apache HTTP server must climb the directory tree in order to find a .htaccess file that might contain overloading rules. It is thus recommended that, if possible, you disable this directive in the Apache configuration.
In your host Apache’s configuration file, add:
AllowOverride none
Further reading:
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/core.html#allowoverride