Nginx Helper Flushing is Slow

I have fastCGI_cache enabled and am using the Nginx Helper plugin to purge cache. Whenever I select any of the checkboxes under “Enable Purge Cache”, it takes 15+ seconds to respond when updating a post or a page. Is this normal? Sometimes I get a message in WordPress that says that my connection has been reset (this is probably an nginx timeout setting in its config?). I just wanted to see if there was anyway to improve the length of time it takes to flush the cache, or is it normal to take this long? Thanks!

My Stack:

  • SSD VPS with 1 CPU and 1 GB RAM
  • Ubuntu 14
  • MariaDB 10
  • PHP 5.6.7
  • nginx 1.6.3 custom with fastcgi cache purge and pagespeed modules
  • HHVM