What does your Local Area connection speed say you are connecting at? Should have 100.0 Mpbs. between the Router and the Laptop. and 10 Mpbs between the modem and directly with your computer.
You've been playing with your MTU settings? Have you seen this one:
MTU Settings Instruction
not sure what your settings are what do you have them set to?
I'm sure you've looked at this on Linksys' Site:
R E F E R E N C E C A T E G O R Y
If I use MTU patches with the Router, will my performance increase?
R E F E R E N C E
There are several third-party Maximum Transmission Unit [MTU] patches available on the Internet. The recommended settings vary by version and operating system with these programs. As a general rule, an MTU setting between 1400 and 1500 is ideal. The Router's firmware (1.39 or above) have a setting that can adjust the MTU. You should not put this higher than 1500 or lower than 1300.
Or this one:
P R O B L E M
I do not know how to set up the proper MTU size, how do I do this?
S O L U T I O N
To find the proper MTU Size, you'll have to do a special ping of the destination you're trying to go to. A destination could be another computer, or a URL.
1. Click on the Start button, then select the Run option.
2. In the "Open" field type in command (If you're using Windows 2K/NT/XP use CMD instead)
3. Once the window opens, you'll need to do a special ping. It should be formatted:
ping [-f] [-l] [MTU value] [Enter] an e...ned input [url]http://192.168.1.1/Filters.htm into the "Address" bar
6. You will be prompted for a User Name and Password. Leave the User Name blank and input admin as the password then click OK
7. Once you've done this you should find your self on the Filters tab. Scroll down to the bottom and look for "MTU". Enable the option and input the optimum value you got earlier. So for our example this would be 1480. After that value has been inputted click Apply then Continue and you're done.
NOTE: If you don't have a "MTU" option please goto
http://www.linksys.com/download and select the model number of the router you have and the OS you're using. Then click on "Firmware" and follow the upgrade instructions.
I've never played with my MTU settings as for the MTU settings of the Router? I don't have any place where I can access or change that, does yours? Maybe they removed it from the 1.44 Firmware for the BEFSR41 v2.0... just as they removed the SPI (Stateful Packet Inspection) option and left it with only the Forwarding.
My setup is pretty basic as you can see from my specs. My Router has forwarding enabled for a BF1942 Linux server I have set up, but nothing is forwarded to my Windows Computer (listed below) That's about it. I have the Firmware 1.44.2 as well and everything is pretty basic, the Linux machine uses a static network IP so I only have DHCP set to 1 since I only need one IP for the Windows comp. Haven't played with any settings. I have no spyware installed and everything that's suppsoed to be automatically checking for updates is turned off. I do everything manually. If you have Nortons AV is keeps a constant conx to the internet to let you know when an update is available as well, Windows Update auto checks every 5 minutes I think the default is. You can turn these off and then you may want to try one of those online speed tests to see if there's any change in your speed. I think CNET has one.