> What difference would the cable length make our machines have about 25m to
> the Switch and 25 m back again
FastEthernet specifies 100meters per "leg" and MAX 5 meters between hubs.
> we have that all done for us by the
> networking guys who do our building but as I understand we are on
> a VPN on a
> big Cisco switch.
Ouch!!!! Make them check the parameters for your ports. Maybe they're messed
up. Or the switch may be just overloaded.
> Would sharing a larger switch slow things down this much? I can't
> understand
> it but something is seriously wrong and I don't think it is us. I have a
You could try to connect a cross-over cable between your 2 pc and try the
speed in that configuration. This could give you some clues. 300kbyte/sec is
way too slow so yes, there's something very wrong.
> meeting with the guy who does all the networks for us tomorrow so
> I want to
> be pretty sure it is not our fault so he can come up with some suggestions
> as to why his network is so slow.
I guess those guys know how to wire cat5, but you should check if it's only
you with such slow speed or also others.
> Could this be packet loss?? Are there any tests we can do to
> narrow down the
> cause?
You should be able to find some network diagnosis software out there. Maybe
your guys already have some (and even the big cisco switch may have some of
these capabilities).
Dave.
