> I have cable, and my speed on the bandwith meters is usually around 1.5
> mbps*. It's about $40 or $45 per month, and is down only a few hours a
> month, maybe 1 or 2. The wireless stuff, if it's the 802.11 stuff, is bad
> news. It's still a pretty massive security risk, so you'd be better off with
> cable or DSL.
> 
> *I really don't know what this is supposed to signify. My download speeds
> range from 200-300 kbs. The very slowest of sites give me about 20 kbs.

1.5mbps is about 190KB/s.  That is what they are guaranteeing you'll get from
the 10Mbps shared network architecture of cable.  So you are getting at or
better than what they advertised (mbps is not the same as MB/s, same thing with
kbps vs KB/s).  Your browser is reporting Kilobytes, while your network is
talked about in kilobits or megabits (8 - 10 bits == 1 byte depending on if you
average out the network overhead of the data into the speed or not).

> And this isn't part of the answer to your question, but one of my own. On
> this Winbox, with the same connection setup as my Linbox, I get about 60
> kbps from the Mozilla site, where my Linux machine gets roughly 4-5 times
> that, at any time of day. Why would that be?

Less overhead, better tcp/ip stack?