[rescue] Unexpectedly slow FDDI

[jwbirdsa at picarefy.com]

   I have several machines strung together with FDDI via SAS connections
to a Cisco WS-C1400. Two are actual fiber and one is CDDI on cat-5. The
cards are 3Com 3c805s (fiber) and a 3c77? (CDDI). The CDDI card has full
duplex enabled. I went through all the configuration on the Cisco before
putting it into service and everything looks right.

   However, when copying files between these machines, I'm seeing less than
six megabytes per minute. Even allowing for SMB overhead, I'm sure it was
faster back when they were wired together with 100baseTX. Do these 3Com
cards just suck? Or maybe it's the Windows (yeah, I know, but they were the
machines that needed big fast file transfers, so they were the ones that
got FDDI) drivers that suck? Or do I have something horribly misconfigured
somewhere?

   I assume that this is not expected performance from FDDI. So, oh ye FDDI
gurus, what should I look at? (Incidentally, is there any way to get the
Cisco to show traffic between stations on the little LED graph? Monitoring
the primary and secondary loops only seem to show activity that goes
through the DAS connection to my main switch, and monitoring the local loop
shows absolutely nothing whatever.)

   Thanks.

   --James B.