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I don't yet understand what is happening. I am only writing this as an "answer" for easier formatting.

You may get some insights from running this command on the robot:

$ rostopic bw /velodyne_packets

For your 32E, I'd expect that to report about 2MB/s (bytes, not bits). But, as long as velodyne_pointcloud is the only subscriber, I would not expect that bandwidth to appear on loopback. While rostopic is running, I would.

$ rostopic bw /velodyne_points

The corresponding point cloud published by velodyne_pointcloud will be considerably larger. It should not appear on the network unless something external to the nodelet process (like rostopic or rviz) is subscribing.