8.51 GB file transfer in 8 minutes on "Gigabit" network: is this good?

It's good, but it could be improved by using faster hard disks.

That's only ~18.1MB/sec. Seems low, but your bandwidth is only as strong as your weakest link.

"It's good, but it could be improved by using faster hard disks."

3000rpm HD? My 7200 RPM white label drive is getting 80MB/sec. Unless Macs are really that bad.

Thanks for the responses. I was thinking that 18-ish MB/sec seemed a bit mediocre too. So what could the "weakest link" be? Is it the 5400rpm HD on the computer? Or is it the Time Capsule (7200rpm drive)?

Any suggestions as to how I could improve the transfer speed?

Thanks.

There's a very good chance the 5400rpm drive is slowing it down.

Without further test, you won't know. You need to isolate each device and test them separately. You would need to find a HD performance test to see how well your HDs perform. Then you would need to find a test to stress your gigabit link. Since a gig link is good for over 100MB/sec, you typically need to use a ram drive to supply the data fast enough to actually attempt to saturate it.

I would think setting up a ram drive in OS X wouldn't be that hard since it's based on BSD, but I don't use/own any MACs.