I have road runner with 7mb/s service. When I connect the cable modem directly to the PC, I get just about 7mb/s. But when I connect the cable modem through my router, different story. My laptop is only getting about 3mb/s with wireless connection. I have Linksys router BEFW11S4 ver. 3 and WPC11ver. 3 pc card. Both capable of transfering 11mb/s of data. I used to have a different cable service that gave me 4mb/s and through my router, I still got about 3mb/s download speed(reasonable). So I'm thinking with the new cable service with faster download speed of 7mb/s, I was hoping to get about 5-6mb/s through my router. Linksys told me that the router needs to be re-configured but since my router was out of warranty, I would have to pay service fee to get it done. She told me she was 100% sure that she can fix the problem so I'm trying to do it myself without having to pay that crazy service charge. If anyone have the knowledge, I would really appreciate it.
Honestly, I would recommend upgrading to wireless G or N equipment. Wireless B signals are easily obstructed by surrounding devices such as microwave ovens and especially cordless phones. Also, your not getting the maximum speed. When you plug into the modem directly, the NIC card transmits at full speed, thus you get your 7mb/s. But wireless b devices are finicky. I have had numerous clients running wireless b devices on service ranging from 1.5 - 7mb/s and all had slow speeds especially on the higher speeds. I changed them out to wireless G and wireless N devices and no problems since. However, the wireless N networks did seem to have higher transmission rates.
