Smart sorting, paging in asp-net, especially repeater control

Hi all. There has been little lagging in my presence to you all with new post. Actually these days there are lots of things in my mind. I am looking over the web to know the best asp.net performance practices. But most of the times I do get stuck with the same old strategies you can find everywhere if you search with the keyword – "asp.net performance tips" or so. However, these tips work 90% of the cases, they are intermediate ones. What about the advanced ones? There are some genius guys who have presented advanced and deep asp.net performance improvement techniques, and thanks to them. Good things cannot hide, so you are sure to find them over the web hanging here and there, no problem.

But here I am going to talk about one thing- paging and sorting in asp.net. From the very beginning I am dissatisfied with the old, easy paging of asp.net gridview that really kills the spirit of web- faster response and scalability. In fact gridview and datagrid both generate heavy markup. The only good way to get rid of all these is to do custom paging, sorting with the gridview and datalist.

Then what about repeater control? Yes, the best option to go is use repeater and use custom sorting/paging with it. Repeater control has always won the heart of programmers- light, efficient and thus effective! I have just been through this better way of paging and sorting with asp.net gridview control. They have managed an example page also. I hope following the same pattern would make a good impression with repeater control also. We would certainly go different pattern for sorting- perhaps a dropdownlist populating all the column names and another dropdownlist with "asc" and "desc" for sorting direction.

As alternatives, I have also liked: this one from codeproject and this one discussed in asp.net tutorial.

What you think? I am still looking for the best paging in asp.net- for gridview, datalist or repeater. Your suggestions and referrals are welcome. Please keep in mind that I am fond of performance friendly options. Thank you. Happy Programming!