Hi, we're having online bandwidth speed problems in our office.

We have two computers in the office using an Earthlink aDSL connection via a Linksys Wireless B router. My boss's computer is using the router while my computer recieves my internet from him via the adapter. We're running Windows XP on our machines.

However my boss's online browsing using the router is much slower. Surprising, considering I'm using a wireless adapter, one would think my online connection should be slower than his. Yet mine is much faster. We do have a WEP Key so that our wireless network is secure. He regularly scans his computer for viruses and spyware. We recently defragmented his computer. And his online browsing is still significantly slower.

We're at our wits end here. Is there anything we haven't checked for? Could the router itself be a problem? Any potential answers would be greatly appreciated.

Have you cleared his cache lately? In Internet Explorer go to Tools-->Internet Options and on the "General" tab click "Delete Files". You should also check to see if the cache size is small...under "Settings" on the same tab. 512MB would be a good size.

I think we solved the problem. It seems that our ISP (Earthlink) had created some toolbars on Internet Explorer. They were actually slowing down the speed on the browser. We even tested the web speed on different browsers that didn't have the attached Earthlink plugin toolbars and sure enough page navigation was faster.

So now we've turned off the toolbars and pop-up blockers from Earthlink on IE, which is fine because we already have MacAfee anti-virus and pop-up blocker toolbars on.

Thanks for the follow-up info pulsewidth16

I've marked this thread as solved, but please repost if that turns out not to be the case.