Simple Question

I have 3Mb calbe service. Why are my downloads only coming across at 100 to 200kbs, and streaming video at 250 to 500kbs. I have used speed test and they say I am approaching 3Mbs. My router is a few years old, it is a linksys 11g (wrt54gs), and I am using cat5e, would upgraing those help? Note, I am not using the wirless funtion of the router.

Are you having any problems with any sites, like Yahoo Mail (adding attachments)...?

If so you may need to adjust yout MTU down to 1400-1420.

A lot of site control bandwith, the reason you average speed ismay be around 200k.

Go to MS download and pick one of there big updates say 150 meg. MS has highspeed servers. So you should get a high speed, if not there may be a bottle neck ou your side.

Look at TomsNetworking router table and see what wan port speed you have.
Have you change the MTU? Turn off the wireless if you are not using it. Are you using a software Firewall along with the routers Firewall? Are you going through a proxy?

If you are using Symantic products (antivirus ...) it will kill you also. Do an intensive virus, spyware and root scan. They can rob your bandwidth too.
If you have P2P software looded, it will grab any and all bandwidth if you have not set it accordingly.

Unload any TSR that are not required.

You may try one of the different firmware that is available.

34mbps is 10x what your provider provides, so your good there.

Glad to see your not using Symantic, MS Firewall OK.

Download StartupList then use Startup List what are you to see if you installed them or they sliped in under the radar.

MTU is located under Optional settings, set manual to 1400 then test.

Do you have the latest loaded on your router. Go to Linksys support section and see if there is a newer version than you have.

I do not have a Linksys router. Currently I am using Netgear FVS338. Also have Netgear FVS328, SMC 7004ABR, SMC 7008ABR. All but one is 8 port.

You will never get the full 3mbps with all of the overhead involved with tcp/ip. They key is not to have lossed packets. Larger you can run the MTU the better, max of 1500. To determing the max MTU ping ip with the -f -L XXXX where XXXX is a number 1472 or less, then add 28 to the value for overhead.
Example: "ping yahoo.com -f -L 1472" If you get a valid ping the value is good. Every site can be different. I know Yahoo Mail has a max of 1480, where if you are using VPN max is 1420.

My netgear FVS328 was rated at 61 mbps on the wan port. I moved up to the FVS338, which has 92 mbps. The difference is that it has a 450mhz Intel X-scale processor for handling VPN encryption. Then it has another processor for handling the wan/lan trafic. It also has lots of ram to workin. I noticed a huge differnce when I went to the 338.

I'd be pretty damned happy with 400-500Kbps on a 3MBps connection. The theretical max for a 3MBps connection is 384Kbps. Correct me if I'm wrong but this seems to be an old case of bits vs bytes. The internet line speed is measured in bits (3 megabit connection) while the throughput is in bytes (kilobytes per second). Since there are 8 bits in every byte you can divide your line speed by 8 to determine what your maximum throughput will be. 3072Kilobit per second connection (1024 KB in every MB) divided by 8 equals 384kilobyes per second.