Well I had the cable company come over today and they checked our cables and whatnot. Turns out we're paying for 8MB/d and getting 12MB/d but that's only if one computer is directly connected. If we connect through the router with the same exact test we're getting 6MB/d.

This is where you guys come in. What could be the problem? I'm going to check the firmware and settings in a bit, but I'm thinking the problem is deeper than that. I have a linksys 54g v5 router. The cable guy said that the router shouldn't be doing that.

Hi

It sounds as if the connection between the PC and Linksys is running at 10Mb not 100.

Have you any other PC's connected ?

If so try unplugging them and running with one PC. There maybe a slow on slowing down the whole system.

How are you measuring the speed ?

hey, you're new. Welcome to the threads!!
I've seen you posting a lot and that's awesome... good to have more brains here

anyways, somehow I think a firmware upgrade fixed it, though only time will tell. After the firmware upgrade i did tests through speakeasy.com connected to the modem and connected via the router. The speeds were only about .5MB off, and in some cases the router was faster! weird, eh?

I goofed up though, and didn't run tests before the firmware upgrade. I was simply going on what i watched the cable tech do while he was here. So for all I know he could have clicked on DC for one test and then NY for the other.

you can try playing with the MTU. it's probably at 1492 now, try to change to to smaller values, like 1300.

Make sure you are using 100mbps cables and network cards, not the 10mbps (a.k.a cheap) ones

I wonder... a 100mbps cable - how can you tell it's not a 10mbps one?

I am wondering this as well !
I have not seen any difference for last 20 years!!

The cables are different for 1 and 2 Gb but not 10 to 100Mbs, as far as I am aware.