I just thought I would chime in here as well.

First of all I think that a key item to consider is that you must have a properly configured DNN site to start with, before you start looking outside of DNN for assistiance, this includes the use of PageBlaster, have a look at the modules you are using, the menu components, all of the settings inside DNN, the logging, and ensure that you have the proper configurations across the board.

Now, my site mitchelsellers.com is on a shared hosting plan, on a DNN installation with 5 other parent portals.  The entire DNN installation does somewhere in the area of 1000 visits per day, with about 5,000-15,000 page views per day and I typically have page load times under 1 second.  or just slightly over.  Now I do not use page blaster and I do not use DNN compression.  The biggest thing that modified my page load times was the proper configuration of logging and the switch to CSS NavMenu.  When I switched menu components I went from page loads of about 3 seconds each to my current time....

So again as others have mentioned it is something that really you have to do a case by case overview.

I do have some blog posts on my site that talk about the host performance settings which can help people that are unsure of how to configure and I'll try to get some more documentation out there regarding logging etc.

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-Mitchel Sellers
Microsoft MVP, ASPInsider, DNN MVP
CEO/Director of Development - IowaComputerGurus Inc.


Visit mitchelsellers.com for my mostly DNN Blog and support forum.

Visit IowaComputerGurus.com for free DNN Modules, DNN Performance Tips, DNN Consulting Quotes, and DNN Technical Support Services

EDIT: My apologiess to Jeff... I was thinking about compression when I responded to this thought...

Contrary to some popular belief... caching actually IS in the core of DNN. As with any solution, performance can vary for many different reasons (hardware, network, server density, internet cloud, site or page characteristics, etc).  However you can do some comparisons easily enough with web tools for before & after.  The www.dotnetnuke.com website traditionally runs "out of the box"... this means that we don't do anthying "private" or artificial to change our performance, rather try to emulate what a normal site should be able to expect (granted we are hosted well).  We run with our basic caching turned on...

1. Navigate to Host > Host Settings.
2. Go to the Advanced Settings - Performance settings section.
3. Select the required value from the drop down list. (Compression Setting) 
4. Click the Update link.

Now, I'd like to avoid the inevitable religious debate about what's "better"... my aim is simply to clarify that there is compression built into DNN and it does work quite well.  As with any feature or module, there are always alternative providers.  We are happy to see them available.

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Scott Willhite, Co-Founder DNN