Hi Pootwaddle,
First, if you are using a compression agent like PageBlaster or another compression program, explore the settings and configurations for these programs first. Due to user reported issues, upgrade anomalies, and other experiences, I have forgone any third party compression at this time and only use the built in DNN compression, Deflate Compression, as noted below.
There are certainly performance settings that are not on the Host configuration page that can degrade site performance significantly and continually, including, but not limited to, the SQL configuration, site log settings, scheduler module settings, and IIS settings, so if you find that changing the Host configuration page performance settings and then restarting the site does not noticeably improve your site performance, you may need to check into the settings of these other components.
Some of the sites I maintain have been hosted with WebHost4Life run for a number of years. I have experienced good support and good network performance from them and because of this, find their cost to performance value to be a good value. I know others in these forums have complained, sometimes bitterly, about WebHost4Life and while I do not doubt their reports, this has not been my experience with WebHost4Life.
As of February 2007, I am running 4.7. Below are the settings accessible from the Host Settings page that work best at this time, for the sites hosted on WebHost4Life:
Host Settings > Advanced Settings > Performance Settings
Page State Persistence: Page
Module Caching Method: Memory
Performance Setting: Heavy
Authenticated Cacheability: Public
Compression Setting: Deflate Compression
Use Whitespace Filter: Not Checked
Host Settings > Advanced Settings > Compression Settings
Compression Settings: Default settings (excluded paths = blank)
Whitespace Filter: Default settings. The default settings are:
(?<=[^])\t{2,}|(?<=[>])\s{2,}(?=[<])|(?<=[>])\s{2,11}(?=[<])|(?=[\n])\s{2,}
The other thing to consider is that performance settings require periodic review. If and as your site grows in volume and traffic, changes to the performance settings may be in order.
Hope this helps, and good luck.