Hi Guys,
This issue is actually with the WPF client rather then the server but it has to do with how the client is talking to the server.
Basically the WPF client is way too chatty right now - to generate a relatively small map it is making some 25-30 requests from the TiledWMSLayer object. Each of these requests covers what appears to be a subset of the map extent being displayed on the client. Because each request is fired off sequentially from the client (which makes sense - no issue there) you end up with 30 batches of tile round trips to complete the map. When I run the same test with the Winforms version of the client I see that version is making a single request for the entire map - so it makes one request to the server, the server then generates all the tiles for that request and they are returned in a single roundtrip. This makes the Winforms version of the client faster then the WPF Version by a factor of 10 over the internet. Also all the tiles are cached on the server so there is no rendering happening on the server it's just returning the cached tiles and the map extent on the client is not changing over the course of this sequence of requests, this is a test where the map is getting requested on start-up before there is any user interaction. I would say that is really the same scenario as zooming though. Even panning I think should be handled with a single map request when the pan gets completed - otherwise it just ends up taking longer for the tiles to update.
I have put a zipped up wpf client app in our directory on your ftp site which you can use to connect to our server over the internet and test the behavior. I am logging on the client right before the DrawCore method of the TileWMSLater object gets called and then also on my Server from the GetMapCore method. I have added a request id parameter to the request url so that i can link the client DrawCore method calls with the corresponding GetMapCore calls being made on the server. Please just let me know if you need any additional information.
Thanks,
Chris