Hi Ashley,
Low bandwidth will have next to no impact on the server. It will be slow for the client, sure, because first their request has to go up, and then the response has to come down, but this will have no effect on the server itself.
>> Also we at times see slow requests which seem to effect the way the NTServer performs,
A "slow request" as reported in the log indicates that a request took more than a few seconds to process. This is completely normal for things (like reports) that take more than a few seconds to process.
Of course if you are asking for the CPU and Disk to do lots of work generating a report, or whatever, then that will consume a lot of that CPU core, and will slow down other requests on that core. In other words, getting the computer to do work slows the computer down.
>> We have some federal government customers that cannot save a report from their browser.
So they _see_ the report, they just can't save it?
>> We are thinking there proxy/firewall is not allowing them to download from a site that is not approved through the firewall,
Assuming your web site is on the same host, this argument makes no sense since all pages are "downloads". But it may be filtering based on extension (pdf). Or maybe the user simply can't print because of security restrictions on their machine. they may not even know _how_ to print.
>> which also may be causing issues for our web server.
again, no, won't cause the server issues. The server doesn't care if the client prints or not.
cheers
Bruce