unclogging the network arteries...
Written on the original Movable Type site and recovered from the Internet Archive.
Ok, so I am running my Retrospect backup over my home LAN from the new RAID box in the basement. I noticed that it had taken 12 hours and still had six hours to go to back up 100Gig on another computer I have on the wired 100mb lan. That seemed slow for some reason. So I checked the line speeds of each computer’s network adaptor. One said connected at 100MB. The other (the RAID) box said 10MB. The Raid was connected to my Firebox SOHO 6 Firewalls | WatchGuard Technologies, Inc.. I had thought it was a 100mb part like the other 10/100 hubs and switches on the network, but NOOOO. It is a 10mb part so the LAN card autonegotiates to the lower 10MB and slows the whole LAN down by 10X. Ouch. A little rewiring later and I have connected the RAID to another hub running 10/100. Back in the fast lane! Don’t let a slow network part slow your whole lan down!