| When I ftp a reasonably large file (base.tgz) from canolog to backup
| with the default configuration, I get pathetic ( < 100 K/s ) performance.
| If I ftp the same file to /dev/null, I get much better (3+ MB/sec)
| performance.

  I have seen something like this on one of my machines. On a 486,
an adaptec 1542CF and a 3C509 had that same problem, obviously
caused by bus contention -- the adaptec took over the bus and left
too few cycles for the NIC. This resulted in very poor network
performance (30-60K/s) when transferring data over the net while
accessing the disks, while otherwise the performance was OK (600K/s).

  I finally got rid of the 3Com, replacing it with some other card,
and I now get acceptable performance.

  Your system is obviously an order of magnitude faster than this
486/66 with its ISA-bus, but so are your disk and NIC...

	mjl