I don't believe that the number of retries is of concern when the network is being saturated. 1Gb/s can max out at about 80,00+ packets per second and the network was minimally in use elsewhere; skpe, online gaming etc (which would have prioritised packets).   I'll subsitiute a segment of the network with a long cable which will byass a couple of switches, but because there's a 50% drop in throughput I don't have much hope for that.   Just to add, iPerf shows that the network