The previous tests were with APC on. At a whim, I ran them with APC off, and here are the results. $ ab2 -n1000 http://head.example.com/| egrep "^Req|^Time" Time taken for tests: 175.623664 seconds Requests per second: 5.69 [#/sec] (mean) Time per request: 175.624 [ms] (mean) Time per request: 175.624 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests) $ ab2 -n1000 http://5.example.com/| egrep "^Req|^Time" Time taken for tests: 183.491533 seconds Requests per second: 5.45 [#/sec] (mean) Time per request: 183.492 [ms] (mean) Time per request: 183.492 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests) Still HEAD is better, but not by a big margin. -- 2bits.com http://2bits.com Drupal development, customization and consulting.