https performance problems

[Gandhalf]

hi all

we are having an argument here about a section of our website exoeriencing very slow performance on ssl secured pages.

Someone here pretends that it's normal, since the ssl has to encrypt/decrypt all pages, including the images that are on the pages.

Does this seem consistent to you?
It seems to mee that the ssl would encrypt the lines of code that call the images, but not the image itself? Or am I saying something stupid?

does anyone know?

thanks

[physics]

SSL does encrypt everything transmitted so the actual images, etc. If it didn't encrypt the actual data sent then that wouldn't be very secure would it (since someone in the middle could then view the images which might contain sensitive information)? But if this is slowing down pages that _need_ to be encrypted the option is not to turn of SSL but to get more servers, CPUs, bandwidth, reducing unnecessary images on SSL pages, etc.