High CPU usage while remote client is connected to daemon

[agnaramasi]

I set up the thin client, but noticed a curious pattern of CPU use. The daemon itself consumes almost no CPU, but when I open the client on my remote machine, the daemon's CPU usage spikes dramatically. This CPU use increases with the number of torrents added to the session. With anything over 200 torrents, the CPU remains continuously at 100%, while the remote client hangs and becomes complete unusable.

I am running deluged on an ARM-based NAS, which has an admittedly weak processor. But it seems to me that the connection between daemon and client is consuming an inordinate quantity of processing power. With rtorrent, I can manage well over 1000 torrents via xmlrpc through the webui.
Is this behaviour normal with deluge, or am I doing something wrong?

I am running libtorrent 15.0 and deluge 1.3.0.