[geeks] Network Slowness

[Sridhar Ayengar]

I have these three machines.  They are configured as follows:

1. IBM Thinkpad T60p
2.16GHz Core Duo
Intel PRO/1000PL Built-In gigabit ethernet
100GB 2.5" 7200RPM SATA drive
2GB RAM
Windows XP Pro SP2

2. Supermicro P6SBU
550MHz Pentium III
Intel i82540EM gigabit ethernet card
73GB 10000RPM Ultra2-SCSI drive
512MB ECC RAM
NetBSD/i386 3.0.1

3. Home-grown PC with Cheap Taiwanese Motherboard (Biostar, maybe?)
Athlon64 X2 3800+ (2GHz dual core)
nVidia nForce built-in gigabit ethernet
400GB 7200RPM SATA drive
2GB RAM
NetBSD/amd64 3.1

Connecting these three machines together is an 8-port HP Procurve 
gigabit switch.  The only other thing attached to the switch is a Cisco 
7505 router routing across the WAN connection, and its interface to the 
switch is a PA-FE-TX.  None of the machines have jumbo frames turned on. 
  The Intel gigabit card in the Pentium III has hardware fragmentation 
and checksumming turned on.

The problem is no matter where I am transferring data from or to,  I 
only get about 5.5MB/sec.  That seems kinda slow to me.  Any ideas?

I would have thought it would go much faster than this on gigabit 
ethernet.  I get better speeds than this on FDDI.

Discuss...  8-)

Peace...  Sridhar