Thanks for the responses. Here's some additional information and
questions based on the responses from folks...

I'm kind of leaning toward the traffic shaping theory right now, but I
don't have a good way to prove it.

A point to clarify (or emphasize): If I connect to this ftp server in
Germany I can see the asymmetry between get and put performance. I am
always the client and I am connected to the same server. I would not
expect the routing to change between gets and puts in the same ftp
session. Is this a bad assumption?

I have run a traceroute from the US to Germany and also from Germany
to the US. The routes are effectively the same (looks like different
interfaces on the same routers).

How do I find out if there's a pmtud black hole in my path?

I ran a traceroute with 256 byte packets (the largest I could generate
with the tool I am using) and the transmission latency seems to be
symmetric.

I can see the same kind of asymmetric performance when doing file
transfers through an encrypted VPN between our US and German offices.
The actual content of the traffic (ftp vs. something else) would be
masked by the ipsec encryption. If someone is "shaping" me, they must
be shaping VPN traffic too.

On Saturday evening, round trip ping time (router to router) between
our US and German offices was about 140 msec. Judging from the
tracert, we took on about 80-90 msec of that time crossing the
ocean.

Does anyone know of a good testing tool that would use UDP packets?
I've got Cisco routers on each end and Windows clients on our
networks.

Thanks for the .

Pat