What I think is happening is you are splitting the I/O into very small peices and waiting for I/O over the net to complete in between reading or constructing every piece.

Perhaps buffering your I/O will help, e.g.:

# ***** Display selected log file to the screen ***** #
#=comment
my @buffer = "<font face='Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif' size=
+\"2\" color=\"#000000\">";
open( FILE, "< $directory/$file" ) or die "Can't open $directory/$file
+ : $!";

push @buffer, <FILE>;
close FILE;
push @buffer, "</font>";
print @buffer;
#=cut
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