slow transfer between LAN ports on SA540

[TEARADMIN]

G'day Everyone,

I have a very odd problem and will try to explain it as best I can.

Setup: SA540 (fw 2.1.71) with pretty basic configuration, no VLANs or QoS. Wireless APs and 3 large Netgear gigabit switches plugged straight into the SA540 LAN ports. Wireless APs are: 1 Aiport Express, 1 Linksys WRT54GL, and 1 Asus RT-N56U.

Problem: network speeds (transferring files) to the servers from wired and wireless workstations is very slow, around 200kBps.

Resoultion: plug the wireless APs into the Netgear switches instead.

Notes: any connection through each of the wireless APs was very slow, but not a signal problem. Even when plugging straight into one of the wireless AP's inbuilt switches, the speed is slow. Only when unplugging these APs from the SA540, and plugging the APs into any of the Netgear switches, does the transfer speed go back to normal even when the traffic still goes through the SA540 to reach the destination.

I don't understand why creating this extra hop between switches would help, and why plugging the APs directly into the SA540 is an issue.

Can anyone help? Please ask for any more details if it will help.

Thanks,

Stuart

[TEARADMIN]

OK, so an update for anyone interested.

Worked out it wasn't to do with the Wireless APs, as I tried other switches set up in the same configurations and had the same slow speeds. I'm starting to think that it is a much simpler problem than originally. In a few days, I'm going to replace all the patch cables between switches with Cat6 and the pair of cables going to the file server with Cat6 as well. I will let you know how that goes. Maybe this is something I should have done long ago, but if that sounds right or wrong please let me know as I'm interested to know anything that you guys think it might be.

Thanks,

Stuart