small LAN speed problems

Hi,

We are a SMALL (3 person) 501c3, running 3 desktop PCs and occassionally a laptop wired through a 4-port Linksys Etherfast router. None of the PCs is a server but one could be considered a server based on how it is "host" to most key files which are accesses by the "clients" through the router.

When a file is opened or saved using the "host" computer the open/save is quite rapid. However, when opening or saving files from a "client" PC the open/save can take up to 5-10 seconds to complete. These are NOT huge files. The most heavily used is a 50MB Excel file. As we are doing this all day long, updating files we all use, this is a major problem.

Would upgrading to a gigabit router & gigabit NIC cards (most if not all the computers came with gigabit NIC cards) make a significant improvement? Are there any other things we could try to improve this performance?

I'm not much of a geek, though my boss calls me "our geek"! I probably know enough to be dangerous, LOL!

Thanks.
John

Thanks, Iceblue.

That makes sense and what I thought was the bottleneck.

John