transfers slow in one direction

[Greg Tillman]

Hi -

I have 3 linux boxes, one set up as a router (of sorts) with 2 eepro100
cards, and boxes A and B each with one eepro100 card, connected to the
router with crossover cables.  

I've been using ftp to get some rough transfer rates, and the problem is
that the transfer rate TO the router is always quite slow (~ 4.5 Mb/sec),
almost as if i were dealing with 10Mb cards.  It doesn't matter if I start
the ftp on the router and do a get, or start it on box A or box B and do a
put, I always get a slow rate.  If I do the transfer in the other
direction, again whether I'm getting or putting, I get 40 to 60 Mb/sec,
which is fine.

I also notice that the slow direction seems to send more RX packets than TX
packets, as measured by ifconfig, for whatever that's worth.  I've tried
'append="eth=0,0,0x20,eth0"' in lilo.conf (all machines and cards) and that
didn't seem to help. I'm running kernel 2.0.36, standard RedHat
distribution 5.2.  Any help appreciated.  Thanks

- greg tillman
university of maine at farmington