Really slow include

I have a header section for my website and I'd like to include it into each page. Since this is where I'm housing all of my navagation. Here is my problem though. I have the header tables sitting in a page header.htm. I'm calling it as so: <? require ("header.htm") ?> This works fine as long as I stay in the main folder /htdocs where the header.htm file is. The problem lies when I go any deeper. I tried replacing the link with: <? require ("/header.htm") ?> Hoping that would put it back to the /htdocs folder as it works for my standard links. Instead I get this: Fatal error: Failed opening required '/header.htm' (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in /www/foo/htdocs/foo/index_test.php on line 82 I've tried correcting it by including the full path: <? require ("http://www.foo.com/header.htm") ?> This does work but it's so amazingly slow. Even on my cable connection it will take 20-30 seconds to load this. I've switched back and forth between require and include with no change in speed. Anyone have a suggestion or an idea on why my load time is suffering so much? I hope all of that was clear enough. Thanks anti-blank