Jeff - You didn't say whether or not you have performed basic datacomm
       performance testing at the operating system level, outside of
*SM. You may have some equipment configuration problems or conflicts,
which FTP or other native functions would help reveal.
Beyond that, do some queries in the server as those Novell clients are
running, and see if they are contending for resources they have in
common, such as waiting for another client to finish with a tape before
they can do their backups to it.
There is also client tracing which can be done, if necessary.
    Richard Sims, BU