Hi,
I'll try to address some of your points.
Pinging the embedded devices from the workstation with increasing packet size caused lost packets already at little over 8 kB.
Was this also an issue with the Procurve-switch, or is this a newly arisen problem (when you deployed the 5130)? Embedded devices are usualy small with close to very little CPU. Sending large frames to the CPU might not just be a good idea.
I also seem to get ten to hundred times longer latencies in the private network than I do with the same workstation in a public network with an identical switch.
What do mean here? Public Network vs private network. Do you mean on a network using public addressing (i.e not RFC 1918 addresses?) Anyway. Increasing ping times when pinging "through" the switch is not related to the switch. (Switch just forwards packets)
Another question: After the tests, I enabled remote management. I can now use the management GUI, but I would rather use CLI. However, I get "Connection to 192.168.1.2 closed by remote host" as soon as SSH accepts the password. Any hints on what might still be missing from the configuration?
You need to do a few things before ssh works.
public-key local create rsa
line vty 0 63
authentication-mode scheme
protocol inbound ssh
quit
domain <name-of-your-domain>
<define-your-aaa-methods> # tacacs+ / radius / local
quit
default domain <name-of-your-domain> enable
Also, if your method is local, you want to create a local user for that purpose.
local-user <local-user-name> class manage
password hash <password-hash>
service-type ssh
authorization-attribute user-role network-admin #user can do anything
quit
Regards