[Zope] zope2.2.0 and what is high load

[bak @ kedai]

oo zopistas
i have a question.
being a small time site maintainer, i don't quite know how to classify the
situation i'm having now.

the site is front ended with apache, with mod_pcgi2.  zope 2.2.0 (running
with -t 25) and  rh 6.2

how can i know that the load i'm having is a big load?  i've been getting
more than 200 simultaneos connections(ps ax|grep http|wc -l) and that affect
the response time.

if the connection is less than 150, then zope's response time is great.

my Q:  what do you BIG SITE admin have?  do you encounter slow down?  i need
some sort of verification that more than 200 simultaneous connect is really
a big load.  i hope not to have to resort to other costly and proprietery
solutions just because of my ignorance.

i know table design does affect loading time, and that will be tackled.
cache is an option that i've looked at but have to disregard for now since i
can't get ie to behave.  i know of the how to and will be looking at it.
i've scaled the site (was once more than 400 connections at one time) with
ZEO to two servers.

i now hope to have insights from yu BIG SITE admins

looking forward to your input, help, and pointers.  i'll try and document
every thing and put a howto.

thanks