Hi,

Due to the process of encrypt and decrypt, yes, the communication throught secure http it's a little bit slower than the normal http. The communication it's what should be affected, not the processing of the page.

The fact that the server it's taking 5/10 min per page with SSL on and not when the SSL is off, make me thinking that that system is way under dimensioned. It is possible that the overhead required by the encryption and decryption process it's handled by the server very badly.

At work We use SSL and we have a little slowdown, but we are talking of 1 or 2 seconds more than the system without SSL when the server it's serving many pages.