Yes, this has been my suspicion too. Calls out across a network like the Internet are always going to perform variably, and each new call you make represents a

Yes, this has been my suspicion too. Calls out across a network like the Internet are always going to perform variably, and each new call you make represents a new roll of the dice on how fast you're going to get a response back. So passing the whole page over the wire in one call feels faster than breaking it up into X calls and then assembling the results of them all on the client end, with the page seeming slower as the value of X gets bigger.