FTP and file transfer speeds

Hello all... i'm working on an file transfer speed issue we first noticed
while installing some apps to various iSeries boxes on our network that are
plugged in to various locations/firewall zones.  Through some more detailed
testing, here's what i'm finding.  Originally, the 'slow' interfaces were
plugged in to a 100/half hub that provides connectivity to our DMZ zone on
our Pix 515.  I've since replaced that hub with a 100/full switch and
reconfigured the *LINDs to the new speed/duplex.  Some retransmits on the
various interfaces I was tracking are looking better since the change (2%
now on the DMZ boxes rather than 4% with the hub), but the file transfers
are still showing the 'SLOW' behavior.

I'm now wondering if this is more of a firewall issue than a
hardware/config issue... is file transfer throughput between different
firewall zones impacted this much by a PIX?

Any advice will be appreciated... details are below:


With 100/Full switch in place for DMZ connections:
|-----------------+-----------------+-----------------+-----------------|
|IP Address       |Firewall         |Time to FTP      |Throughput       |
|                 |Zone/Hub/Switch  |(seconds)        |(Kbytes/second)  |
|-----------------+-----------------+-----------------+-----------------|
|a.a.a.a          |Inside           |.95              |7000.15          |
|-----------------+-----------------+-----------------+-----------------|
|b.b.b.b          |DMZ              |34.34            |194.26           |
|-----------------+-----------------+-----------------+-----------------|
|c.c.c.c          |DMZ              |19.23            |346.84           |
|-----------------+-----------------+-----------------+-----------------|
|d.d.d.d          |Inside           |3.55             |1880.78          |
|-----------------+-----------------+-----------------+-----------------|
|e.e.e.e          |DMZ              |18.63            |358.18           |
|-----------------+-----------------+-----------------+-----------------|
|                 |                 |                 |                 |
|-----------------+-----------------+-----------------+-----------------|




With 100/Half hub in place for DMZ connections:
|-----------------+-----------------+-----------------+-----------------|
|   IP Address    |    Firewall     |   Time to FTP   |   Throughput    |
|                 | Zone/Hub/Switch |    (seconds)    | (Kbytes/second) |
|-----------------+-----------------+-----------------+-----------------|
|     a.a.a.a     |     Inside      |       .67       |     9927.29     |
|-----------------+-----------------+-----------------+-----------------|
|     b.b.b.b     |       DMZ       |      13.56      |     491.86      |
|-----------------+-----------------+-----------------+-----------------|
|     c.c.c.c     |       DMZ       |      32.49      |     205.35      |
|-----------------+-----------------+-----------------+-----------------|
|     d.d.d.d     |     Inside      |      2.28       |     2924.66     |
|-----------------+-----------------+-----------------+-----------------|
|     e.e.e.e     |       DMZ       |      23.25      |     286.92      |
|-----------------+-----------------+-----------------+-----------------|





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