December iMac vs. Netgear GS105 hub

[Tom M.Blenko]

I have an iMac purchased in December, 2006 and plugged into a hub on my 
local network. I'm not happy for two reasons:

	1. File transfers run consistently at 1-2Mb/s via the hub to a dual G5 
on the same network
	2. The activity light at the hub blinks constantly (at a speed I 
associate with 10/100 transfers)

Routing is being done off an Airport Extreme that is also plugged into 
the hub (and whose activity sometimes appears to correlate with that on 
the iMac). Aside from the speed, traffic seems to go on and off the 
machine just fine.

The hub has been in service and working without incident for a couple 
of years with three of four machines plugged in, including the iMac 
this one replaced and two other Apple boxes. I've switched ports for 
machines on both ends of the sftp. The network interface on the iMac is 
set to configure automatically in System Preferences. I've also tried 
it with IPv6 both on and off. I see the activity at the hub even when 
Network Utility shows no packets moving on the interface. If I crank up 
some activity, the packets move and the Network Utility shows them just 
fine. If I plug the iMac directly to the dual G5, I see 100-200Mb 
transfers, which is (a little better than) what I expect via the hub.

AppleCare has been utterly unhelpful. They say that when iMac is 
plugged back to back with the dual G5 there's nothing wrong, so it's 
not a problem with the machine or its configuration. They want to blame 
the hub. No response when I ask how I'm supposed to use this machine in 
a networked environment, whether the iMac is certified with this or any 
other hub, whether there are any known incompatibilities. "Talk to 
Netgear". Search at Netgear knowledgebase ("iMac incompatibitilities") 
turns up one hit which appears not to be relevant.

I'd be interested in hearing any ideas. I can't even run backups this 
machine due to the speed issue.

	Tom