Many Server Requests Increasing Page Load Time

"So, I guess there's nothing on the server that we can do to help with
this?"

Not a lot. Depending on what web server you are using and other factors
there are some ways to compress content before delivery so that it takes
less bandwidth. But basically bandwidth is bandwidth and how large a
web page and all its parts are will determine how long it takes to
deliver from your server over all the intermediate connections to the
client.

Other then make smaller more efficient pages, no there is not a lot that
can be done.

I don't imagine it would be an issue. Does your page load slow? Does your main audience use dial up?

I would be more concerned with optimizing images over worrying about how many requests the browser makes for your page.

Yes, mainly images - we have about 15 small gif images on several pages and maybe 7 or 8 jpgs and pngs. We also have about 7 .js files and 3 .css includes as well. We also have a .jsp include for our live support. I guess it's not quite 50, but it's still a lot.

So, I guess there's nothing on the server that we can do to help with this?

You can cache queries but images/html tags/etc caching would depend on the user's browser cache preference. Have you checked other web sites to see how many items/requests they have to compare to yours? I'm guessing other sites have quite a few as well (try going to si.com or espn.com, talk about obscene amounts of content/requests).

What are the requests you're seeing for your web site? Images?