Bandwidth Speed Issues
In the last few days, I started to notice a huge slowdown on my MacBook Pro when surfing the net. At first, it seemed to be a Firefox-hogging-a-shitload-of-memory issue. So I started using Safari instead. After a few hours of using Safari, the problem came back and pages were taking 5-6 seconds to load. I have a Cable (Comcast) modem, so I didn't suspect any bandwidth issues.
Last night, I got tired of waiting and decided to do some further investigation. I started off by running several bandwidth speed tests. All of them reported similar statistics: download speeds of under 300K/sec. I called Comcast, they ran some tests and determined that there were no package loss issues between my modem and their facilities.
Since I moved my modem downstairs last year, I tried moving it upstairs. Same result. I tried plugging it directly into my desktop and voila! - 3MB/sec. I have 2 NetGear routers setup (one for each laptop since my MacBook Pro's wireless abilities suck) and it seems like they are the source of the problem. Do routers go bad like this?
I'm considering buying an Airport Extreme to solve all my Mac-related wireless issues. Unfortunately, it only has 3 ethernet ports and I'd prefer a lot more.