on my ultra 10 after some heavy file transfer both via scp and ftp using
the ex0 NIC the load average stay fixed to 3.
There is no CPU consuming process:

ps -auwx | less
USER PID %CPU %MEM  VSZ   RSS TT STAT STARTED    TIME COMMAND
root   3  2.1 15.6    0 81592 ?? DK    8:18PM 3:55.14 [pagedaemon]
root 754  0.0  0.1  960   416 p0 R+   11:52PM 0:00.00 ps -auwx 
root 212  0.0  0.4 1624  1944 p0 Ds    8:32PM 0:-1.83 -tcsh 
root 210  0.0  0.4  976  2232 ?? Ss    8:32PM 0:-1.77 sshd: root@ttyp0 
root 206  0.0  0.0   96   856 ?? SWs+       - 0:00.00 /usr/libexec/getty
suncons
 console 
root 191  0.0  0.2  312   880 ?? Ss    8:18PM 0:00.08 /usr/sbin/cron 
root 186  0.0  0.2  136   968 ?? Ss    8:18PM 0:00.01 /usr/sbin/inetd -l 
root 173  0.0  0.0  784  1664 ?? SWs        - 0:00.00 /usr/sbin/sshd 
root  93  0.0  0.2  248   864 ?? Ss    8:18PM 0:-1.22 /usr/sbin/syslogd -s 
root   6  0.0 15.6    0 81592 ?? DK    8:18PM 0:31.79 [aiodoned]
root   5  0.0 15.6    0 81592 ?? DK    8:18PM 0:26.54 [ioflush]
root   4  0.0 15.6    0 81592 ?? DK    8:18PM 0:00.25 [reaper]
root   2  0.0 15.6    0 81592 ?? DK    8:18PM 0:00.00 [atapibus0]
root   1  0.0  0.0  880   136 ?? SWs        - 0:00.00 init 
root 755  0.0  0.4 1624  1944 p0 RV   11:52PM 0:00.00 -tcsh 
root   0  0.0 15.6    0 81592 ?? DKs   8:18PM 0:00.50 [swapper]

but the load average stays always high:

11:52PM  up  3:34, 1 user, load averages: 3.20, 3.15, 3.02
USER TTY FROM              LOGIN@  IDLE WHAT
root  p0 sword.hidden.org  8:32PM     0 w 

this happened after a heavy file transfer on the 3com interface and load
average won't go down anymore, unless I reboot.
I did not notice this issue using hme0


Rick