Noob question - Mbps of ISPs?

Heya,
Sorry for the noob question, but. I'm trying to find out if having a quality cable modem, is going to increase the speed of my cable connection thru Earthlink. I believe my connection has a cap of like 4mbps, so how could any better of a router or the dual-gigabit configuration offer any more speed? (Right now Im using the POS modem that came with the installation) Thanks, and be gentle plz! :-)
-Kevin

If you want to check your connection speed here is a link to SpeedTest

Most cable modems that I have seen have a bandwidth of around 30mbps, which exceds your requirment. If in dought go the mfg home page and dig up the specs.

Routers have a bigger impact if you are using one, Which I recommend for the hardware Firewall.

I used to think so too, until I compared speedtest results from my Netgear router against my m0n0wall firewall running on an old PC. The results surprised me, with m0n0wall I was seeing an improvement of almost 10%. Granted, at the time I had 10mbps service from Road Runner that actually ran closer to 12mbps. I guess routers were designed with 3-5mbps in mind, as that was probably the max speed any ISP offered when they designed the router.

Regardless, this doesn't apply here as he only has 4mbps service. If you aren't getting close to 4mbps, you should try again, early in the morning or late at night if possible. It's entirely possible the network is just loaded down with lots of users. If that doesn't solve the problem, I'd try a different network card and running from a LiveCD of some kind to ensure that your PC has no spyware and/or viruses when you run the test.

Road Runner through Bright House offers 10/1 mbps for $60. In Central Florida they do anyway.