I don't use samba, so I'm not really qualified to say whether or not your samba data transfer rates are typical.

You're welcome.

Cat5E and CAT5 have very little different technical specs, many found in the tests they have done, like PS, PSNEXT FENEXT and so forth wasn't putting the cable down sorry that I hurt its feelings. I did not know that direct connection would work, is the cards auto MDI and MDI-X. I'm sure you'll get it figured out, just thought I would help with the cable specs, I work in data center infrastructure environments, find gig cards like switches, might be a BTU thing. haven't figured it out yet. GOOD LUCK

gecon,

I was glancing through the post and your ethtool outputs. Watch your duplex settings. I saw that you were not setting them explicitly while setting the speed and disabling auto-negotiation. Mismatched and half-duplexing will kill your performance. From what I saw, I was not necessarily convinced that duplexing was not part of your issue. (However, I did not read everything word for word.)

Make sure that you always set the duplexing whenever you set the speed even if you don't think it is necessary and always set it to FULL unless there is a clear, concise reason to set it to HALF.

My background is with Cisco routers and I have seen more people consistently get bit in the butt by duplexing issues than any other networking problem.

My Two Cents Worth.

Doug.