Fellow networkers,

I have a Cable modem at home with download speeds of 13 - 15Mb/s. I
love it! Unfortunately, I only measure those speeds on my wired
computers. The wireless ones (I tried 2 laptops using 2 different
PCMCIA cards) only get around 6.5-7 Mb/s when downloading from the
Internet.

NOTE: when transferring a file from my wired computer to the wireless
one, I did get around 15Mb/s. That's slow but it proves that the
wireless computer can receive more than 7Mb/s.

I am using my new Linksys WRT54GS. Both laptops are P4, 512MB RAM,
Win XP SP2. Here is what I tried to eliminate the obvious:

1. Tried both laptops with the same card. Same results, hence not a
computer problem.
2. Tried both laptops with a wired connection. Got 13Mb/s. Again,
not a computer issue. Router is capable.
3. I tried a different wireless card on both laptops. Back to 7Mb/s.
I guess that rules out the wireless adapter.
4. I changed from WPA to WEP and then to no encryption at all. No
improvement.
5. I tried different wireless channels. No luck.
6. I unplugged my only 2.4GHZ cordless phone. Nope. Router is fine.
7. I moved to the room where the router resides. No improvement. I
guess there is no major signal loss.
8. Brought a new laptop from work with an internal Mini-PCI card. Same
speed. Not a PCMCIA limit.
9. Switched back to the old router (Netgear MR814v2). Same old, same
old.

The only thing I am yet to try is using a USB wireless adapter but I
doubt it will show any better speeds.

Is Wireless Internet severely limited? Am I missing something?

Thanks in advance for any advice,
Dotan