There is a limit on connections somewhere along the line here... On a windows server 2008 machine, each request to a url running on localhost takes ~3 seconds to complete. This is fine and normal for the url.
However, if i open the same localhost url in about 10 tabs, and set them to reload all at the same time, they finish sequentially, 3 seconds after each other. Meaning the last tab has taken 30 seconds to load (3s x 10). What is especially odd is that firebug reports each page as taking 3seconds to load. Another point to add is that the status bar just sits at 'done' for the last tab until 3 seconds before completing, where it then changes to 'waiting for localhost'.
I am praying there is some connection limit somewhere otherwise this would be a disaster if more than one user ever visited the site at a time! Maybe a limit or something where one pc cant make more than 2 simultaneous requests to a url at a given time?