Network Bandwidth Issues

[Joe Kelsey]

I have experienced severe network bandwidth issues on all versions of
-stable since 4.8, and yet I have never seen any discussion of these
issues.

The way I see these issues has come from having side-by-side boxes on
the same 100M switch have wildly different bandwidth when talking to
various remote sites.  For instance, downloading ports, the newer box
(post 4.8) regularly suffers under 1M bandwidth, while the 4.7 box
merrily trots along at maximum speed.  This seems somehow unrelated to
the actual network hardware, as I have seen the same thing with fxp, de
and rl cards.

Has anyone explored network bandwidth issues in -stable recently?  What
can I do to work out these problems?

Thanks.
/Joe