Originally Posted by Ron Bennett

The total size of the images is what's going to matter most, since most webserver software / browsers use pipelining these days so multiple images, etc can be sent on the same connection.

Check your server load level ... if the load (that is to say the number of requests waiting) is above 2, that may be an indication it's having trouble keeping up...

Sometimes increasing memory is all that's needed - the more that's cached in ram as opposed to being read off the HD, the faster requests will be...

On a related note, there are some logging features in both Linux (if running that OS) and Apache (and of most others) that frequently hit the HD - disabling some types of logging (when it's practical to do so) can help speed things up by reducing HD accesses.

All of the above is basically meaningless if your server connection to the internet is slow - however, if most of what you're serving is static images, then I'd wager your connection is likely fast enough for your needs, but something to verify *before* tinkering too much with the server itself.

Ron