Why is my ethernet connection between two Macs so slow? I'm currently trying to port all my old stuff from an old Power Mac G4 (MDD) to a newer Power Mac G5 (Late 2005). Both have gigabit ethernet and so I decided to connect the two via ethernet cable (Cat6). Both are running OS X 10.5.8.

However... I'm only getting speeds of up to about 40Mbit/s, and it's taking hours (nearly a whole day in total) to transfer about 200GB. Are there any reasons why it might be so slow, and is there any way I can speed it up?

Thanks!

:-Joe
I already have this problem in the past and solve it by disabling internet sharing. I don't know why disabling internet sharing speedup bandwidth but it maybe useful for you.

You can also try another ethernet cable.