[rescue] When is 100 less than 10?

[Sheldon T. Hall]

While I'll admit that there's a bunch I don't know about networking, I
always thought I could determine the speed of things.  This, however, has me
flummoxed.

100baseT is slower than 10baseT on my SGI Challenge L.

The Challenge's normal ethernet connection is 10baseT on interface et0.
Works fine.

The Challenge has a vfe board, which claims to do 100baseT.  I've enabled
that, hooked it up, etc.  It works.  It works, but it sucks.  It's much
_slower_ than the 10baseT et0 as a "user experience;" X applications that
start right up when I connect the machine as 10baseT take 10 or 15 seconds
to start when I use the 100baseT connection.

Only FTP is faster; its transfer times are 3.something MBps with 100baseT,
and 0.9 MBps with 10baseT.  Everything else, though, bleah.

I'm enabling and connecting only one or the other, so there shouldn't be a
conflict.  The rest of the network is all 100baseT.  Both et0 and vfe0 on
the Challenge are half-duplex.

I know SGI's 100baseT arrangements aren't the best, but why is it slower
than 10baseT?  How have I screwed up?

Thanks.

-Shel