Help! (router problem?)

[ALANMAN]

i'm at a friends house right now and trying to get a new linksys router (wrt54g) working properly. the wireless part of the old netgear router they had no longer transmits a signal and is confirmed dead, but the ethernet ports still work. right now i have the linksys router connected to the cable modem but the internet speed is extremely horribly slow, like about 500Kbit down, 200Kbit upload, and 1500+ MS ping times. i'm pretty sure it's not the modem because i can connect the old netgear directly with an ethernet cable and speed tests show around 6 Mbit download, 500Kbit upload, and 30 MS ping times. i can get into the setup page via 192.168.1.1, but i only know what a few of the basic settings there do. i know i'm leaving out important details about the linksys router but i don't know much about networking.

any help would be much appreciated!!

EDIT: Cable internet ISP is COX communications in Phoenix, AZ. Modem is Scientific Atlantica Webstar, couldn't find model #

 

[AdamBomb42]

The first thing you want to do is update the firmware. Try that and let me know how it goes.

 

[rodney_ws]

If your wireless connection is working at all, that's a good start... like the other guy said, you definitely want to update your firmware to the latest. If your wireless speed is still considerably slower than your wired speed, you might want to try forcing the access point to use a different channel in the spectrum or you might want to consider doing a check of the cordless phones in the residence. Some phones do NOT play nicely with wireless networks.

 

[ALANMAN]

Thanks for replying. Firmware update made no difference. I ended up taking the linksys router back and exchanging it for a netgear (apparently there's an incompatibility with it and the wireless NIC, which is a netgear 108Mbit). everythings working fine now. Once again, thanks.