Speed abilities

[Coyoteboy]

Ive read a few comments, the usual about it being slower,sometimes vastly 
slower than a C++ written item but I was wondering if its 'slow' 
incomparison with what I need. I'm looking at taking two arrays of 12 bytes 
over an ethernet connection, comparing them, recieving correction data 
(single byte) from another module over a pipe at approximately 900Hz and 
using all these with a fairly complex set of algorithms to generate a new 
set of 12 byte data. This has to be done in a very short time, preferably 
the same rate of throughput as the 900Hz. Am i asking too much of Python? I 
find C++/MFC fairly complex and python looked like a great alternative if it 
hadnt been 'flagged' as slow.

Cheers
J