EEK - you gotta be kidding me - I read this to mean that there is some non-standard MTU value being put in place in W2K as its OWN f'ing standard...
Steve Ballmer - thank you so bloody much!!!!

I do remember tweaking the MTU value on my W2K boxes last year - but not for that reason - there was some weird-@ss network contention back at my linux servers and the Oracle queries were pig dog SLOW.
>Download the tool that Paul metioned at:
>http://www.dslreports.com/front/drtcp.html
>
>It's just a little .exe file that will do the trick.
>
>Regards, John
>
>>John,
>>
>>How did you change the value - did you use the Win-XP Help item to do it?
>>
>>Thanks
>>
>>
>>>THANK YOU! This contribution is as good as gold to me! This advice changed the speed I can synchronize my laptop with my desktop by atleast 10 times. The speed difference is overwhelming. Also, all my network Apps run much faster. Thanks for the speed up!
>>>
>>>Regards, John
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>I had the same problem until recently I changed the MTU--Maximum Transmision Unit for TCP/IP to 1454. Under some circumstances routers and other backbone equipment will chop up and fragment MTU packets. If you notice a lot of flashing lights on your router while nothing is going on, you might try lowering the MTU on the target machines.
>>>>
>>>>If you need a tweaking tool for MTU try:
>>>>
>>>>http://www.dslreports.com/front/drtcp.html
>>>>
>>>>HTH,
>>>>
>>>>--Paul