Resolved slow wireless d/l speed problem

Yes, wireless d/l and u/l speeds are now typically 6400 kbps and 500 kbps and, additionally are a lot more steady. Plus they seem unaffected by cordless phones, phone lines to TVs or microwave ovens.
How did I do it? I just changed the router. So, it seems the previous one may have had a hardware problem.
More detail is provided in the forum thread I started on this yesterday.

Wireless d/l speed only half that of wired.

Although I'm very pleased with the boost in Internet speeds we got this week, I'm very puzzled as to why the wireless d/l rate in all three of our computers which are wirelessly connected.
I posted this to the MacRumor forums and got a lot of replies. As yet, however, the problem remains unresolved.
Nevertheless, There are very many articles, posts and threads on this topic (including this, this and this) but all without an obvious solution for my situation.

Satellite TV system reduces Internet speed

With my new Internet speed (up to 6400 kbps down and 520 kbps up), I had found that there was a major interference from the Sky satellite system which requires two phone cables from the main phone output box to each of the two Sky boxes that we have.
When the phone cables were plugeed into the TVs, Internet d/l speed droped from about 6200-6400 to 300-3200 kbps.
However, the problem was easily resolved.
I bought a Advent ADSL filter for €10 and inserted it in the main phone socket. The line that goes to the router I placed in the ADSL outlet of the filter. Then in the phone outlet of the filter I placed the "tripler" that had previously been in the main phone socket. Into two of the tripler outlets I placed the two phone lines that go to the Sky boxes.
Note that the line from the ADSL outlet actually splits to both the router and a phone.
Nevertheless, this arrangement exactly solved the problem. Now, even with the phone lines hooked up to the two Sky boxes, Internet d/l speeds over 6000 kbps are obtained.

Faster and faster internet

Spoke quite a few times to my ISP (Eircom) as to why I was not seeing a consistent 3 Mbps d/l rate. The guy claimed that it our Sky satellite TV (which is hooked up to phone lines) may be interfering with the signal which he said was very noisy.
So I disconnected the phone line from both TVs, whereupon the guy said that the signal became steadier and clean. He recommended putting an ADSL filter on each of the phone lines to the TVs.
He then said that everything was ready for my line to be upgraded to 7.6 Mbps and I would start seeing this in 10-15 minutes.
However, even after 2 hours, the best I was getting was still below 3 Mbps.
So, on the phone again. This guy said that it had never been set up for 7.6 Mbps but he could do it right now. So, he did and the speed actually did go up to in excess of 6 Mbps with about 450 kbps u/l.
Now some hours later I'm still getting this (with phone line to TVs disconnected). Just right now I measured 6138 kbps d/l and 500 kbps u/l. However, it seems the router needs to be rebooted every now and again.
But, although the situation is not troublefree, at least things are moving a lot more swiftly than they were at the start of the week. Indeed, right now, I don't know how I could have put up with only 1600 kbps just a few days ago (and worse, 1 Mbps a few years ago).

Internet upgrade

I've been using Eircom Home Plus for a long time. Its download and upload speeds (actual rather than what they're supposed to be): 1650 kbps/200 kbps.
I had talked quite a bit to Eircom as to why I wasn't getting the advertised 2048/256 speeds and they claimed that anything upwards of 80% of the nominal rate was considered OK. They claimed that distance from the exchange mad a big difference to what actual speeds were attainable.
In any event, they have been promising that this package (Home Plus) will be updated before the end of the summer to 3072 kbps but that hasn't happened yet.
So, yesterday, I upgraded to Home Professional which has advertised speeds of 3072/384. What's more, this package will be upgraded to 7782/672 sometime very soon (they even said it might be this week).
In any event, my speed went up today. First to something like 2150/470. So, as it hadn't reached to where I expected, I called them and, after looking at the data, they concluded there was an error in something or other. They fixed this quickly and I immediately starting getting speeds of 3150/285. So this was a huge jump and I was very pleased with this, particularly as an even greater jump was likely very soon.
It's interesting to note that the attained download speed was actually GREATER than the advertised d/l speed of 3072 kbps which might suggest that whatever my distance from the exchange it shouldn't prevent me getting a high d/l speed.
Another possibility becomes obvious looking at the d/l&u/l speeds attained in the two instances quoted: 2150/470 and 3150/285 versus advertised of 3072/384. This seems to indicate that they can fiddle around with the upload/download speed combinations. So, if upload is high, d/l comes down a lot.
Anyway, these good speeds persisted for a couple of hours and then, without warning, both deteriorated. Right now we are getting 1800/270. Looks like I'm going to have to talk to them again tomorrow.

Speed and performance in Ubuntu Hardy

During my Windows days (long time ago) I had always been interested in trying out all sorts of half-assed, snake-oil type schemes to speed up performance on my computer. However, I soon learnt that the vast majority, if not all, of these so-called tips, were simply nonsense.
Nevertheless, I came across this blogpost and decided I'd try out the suggestions just to see. My reasoning was that I have a lot more faith in suggestions made in the Linux arena than I have for Windows which seems surrounded by an army of gobshites and chancers.
Now I didn't do the writeback (in /etc/fstab) option due to the warnings given by the author.
The problem with these tweaks is that it's hard to truly judge whether or not there has been any performance improvement, but in general I can't say I noticed any difference, bad or good.
Nevertheless, it's best to leave it over a few days to see if anything at all has changed.
The boot time(from selecting Ubuntu from the Grub menu to the cpu reverting to 0% on the desktop) was 82 seconds. Unfortunately, I had never measured it before but certainly it doesn't seem like it booted any faster or slower than before.

Additionally, I now get about 80% of the bandwidth that I'm paying the ISP for. However, according to the ISP, anything over 78% is acceptable. Well, OK. At least, they didn't say anything over 0% was OK by them.
Nevertheless, I wanted to see if there was anyway to add a few bps to my bandwidth. I am of course aware of the plethora of total garbage, and fake claims and offers, that envelope this issue particularly in the Windows arena.
However, from the same blog as I used earlier in this post I got this and tried it.
I then tried three different speed tests (speakeasy, gambitdesign and the one from my ISP). Every single one of them showed absolutely no evidence for any improvement whatsoever.

So, a bit of a blank day on the performance front but at least things didn't get worse. In reality, I'd like to observe how things look over the next few days before drawing a final conclusion.