http protocol very slow for moderate-sized data sets

I'm setting up a subversion repository, to be accessed via http through
apache. We have what I consider a moderately (but not excessively) large
amount of data under version control... about 350 MB. I am finding the
performance to be unacceptably slow.

When I try accessing the repository using the file:// protocol on the
local machine with a test block of ~150MB it reliably takes about 30
seconds to check out a fresh working copy. When I try the same query
from the local machine via the http:// protocol, it takes over 2
minutes.

Question 1: Why the discrepancy between the http:// and file://
protocols? What would produce a factor of 4 overhead?

Question 2: Are these timings reasonable? Is subversion this slow?

Question 3: If the answer to 2 is no, then does anyone have suggestions
of what to do to troubleshoot my installation?

-- Michael Chermside

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Received on Tue Apr 26 22:49:25 2005