First, thanks for suggesting Ethernet, because if nothing else, it gave me my first experience with setting up an LAN (after reading many, many, many posts on the subject over the years), and although I had to sort through a wee bit of confusion, confusing to me, that is, it was no real big deal.
Now, throughput...
1. 12.24Gb of mp3s, both long (entire operas) and short, drag & drop via FW400 from G to MB: 25.5Mbps (8 min.)
2. Same, via FW800 from G to MBP: 40.8Mbps (5 min.)
3. 8.43Gb of operas (Don't ask!) drag & drop via Ethernet from MB to MBP: 1.76Mbps (80 min.)
4. Same, but with a different cable. (The first example was with a
n 8" Cat 5e cable I bought on-line, the second, with a 6' Verizon cable with no obvious specs.): 2.81Mbps (50 min.)
(Note that examples 3 & 4 are extrapolations based on 10% completed throughput.)
For examples 5 & 6, I worked on the assumption that rsync combined with other methodology would be fastest.
5. 151.52Gb of long and short mp3s and all sorts of other data cloned with CCC via Ethernet from MB to MBP: 11.50Mbps (3:39:31)
6. Same, but cloned with CCC via FW800 from MBP to G: 34.9Mbps (1:12:20)
So, unless someone can think of something very wrong that I might have done with Ethernet, my original impression that Ethernet would be slower than FW400 was apparently
very correct.
Having been in alien territory, and not particularly anxious to spend the rest of my life there, I stopped with those stats in-hand, but if there's anything anybody thinks I can try that might shed some light on my results I'll be happy to keep trying.
Edit: Is it odd that the huge FW 800 clone ran slower than the FW 800 drag & drop?