Here are a few comparisons between NetBSD+netatalk and Mac OS file 
sharing. The setup is 10Base-T ethernet on a network with two ci's, and 
fx and a PowerBase 240. I ran Helios LANtest on the PowerBase. Here are 
the configurations of the machines:

(1) One ci is running NetBSD 1.3 and netatalk 1.4b2. Its name is Sauron.

(2) The other ci is running Mac OS 7.6.1 and Open Transport 1.1.2.

(3) The fx is running Mac OS 7.6.1 and Open Transport 1.1.2.

(4) The PowerBase has Mac OS 8 and Open Transport 1.2.

The results:

Action                             Sauron      ci        fx

create 100 files @20K (sec)        58.56     35.93     25.46
open/close 100 files (sec)          7.74      7.07      5.53
remove 100 files (sec)             13.09      8.51      6.51
write 3 MB to a file (KB/sec)      49.44     86.03    130.72
read 3 MB from a file (KB/sec)    108.28     67.67    117.72
lock/unlock 4000 times (sec)       99.84    109.05    101.08
read directory 320 files (sec)      4.66      1.29      0.93

This was done on a 10base-T ethernet with only those machines and a 
printer installed. All results are from averaging 10 runs of each test. 
Both the ci's a pretty much the same hardware. I get almost three times 
the speed from Sauron, if I transfer files by ftp from the PowerBase.

As a side note, running A/UX 3.02 on the fx gives over 300 KB/sec via ftp 
between the PowerBase and the fx. I think this is because A/UX knows how 
to take advantage of DMA on the fx, while Mac OS does not.

Lee Larson       http://www.louisville.edu/~lmlars01/        (502)852-6826
Mathematics Department, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY 40292 USA