multiple 401 authorization iis 7.5 page load

I'd agree with Michael that my first feeling is that this is a persistence issue. I've had to try and improve performance with NTLM in the past and a few other things spring to mind too;

 

 

1) Turn off authentication for images and (if you're allowed) css files.

 

2) Use compression!

 

3) Reduce the minimum compression size to 900B if bandwidth is an issue anywhere.

 

4) Ensure client caching and related HTTP headers and server cache settings are correct (ETags used to be an issue with IIS and IE).

 

5) Now that you can, use OneConnect with NTLM Connection Pooling (if available with your version).

 

6) If IPsec is used anywhere between client and Virtual Server, reduce the external VLAN MTU to a value that will avoid fragmentation.

 

7) Use an iRule to respond to If-Modified-Since client requests with a 304 (if images and css, js etc are reasonably static), this will avoid a shed load of 401's.