I've just bought a Netgear Rangemax router and wireless adapter, and when set up, it only connects at 54Mbps (both are 108 devices)

I rang Netgear to see if i had set something up wrong, but they said that's fine, and these devices are supposed to connect at 54Mbps, will rise to 108 when there is high traffic, and then drop back down to 54. First of all is that true? (he claimed that that was now a standard for 802.11g)

Anyway, thought i'd test it out, so downloaded the same file a few times when plugged in with an ethernet cable, and managed to get an average download speed of 200KB/sec, but when using wireless, only got around 100KB/sec.

What constitutes high traffic for this to actually step up its connection speed?

802.11g is only 54Mbps, there is no 108 standard yet. 802.11n will be out next year which will be high speed (something like 100 - 300 Mbps).

Although 802.11g is 54Mbps the actual throughput is around 22Mbps so your 108 connection may give around 44Mbps in real life.

Your download speed of only 100Kbps doesn't sound right. Although the wireless connection will add a little latency you shouldn't really see a differnce with Broadband speeds. I get around 200Kbps download speed using either my 54Mbps wireless or a 100Mbps fixed connection.

Possibly you have interference from other wireless devices, try changing the channnels being used.

I don't think its interference, because at the moment the PC is right next to the router, so there is absolutely nothing in its path, and they're about 10cm apart, showing 100% signal - that's why I was a little confused

I've got it on Auto 108, which is the setting they say to leave it on, which means you can only use channel 6, so that's not an option either. I think I've got to play about with it a bit, cos it seems a bit stupid to have paid more for it if I'm still going to get only 54Mbps.........

Thanks for the advice, as you say, I wasn't expecting any difference in speed seeing as I only have a 2 meg connection anyway

i have the same bit of kit mate and id say i average about 130kbs download, if im lucky it will get to about 190kbs

Check that the routers firmware is bang upto date! I've got a Netgear MIMO router and I had similar kind of problems until I upgraded to the latest firmware! Now it's running top notch...I have 10Mb broadband and I can get 1.03Mb a second, three floors up (loft bedroom), 24/7!

Try transfering a single large file say 500 megs or so from one computer to another on your lan,test it with both ethernet and wireless and see what you get rather than trusting your internet connection to do the tests. with my netgear kit i get around the same with both ethernet or wireless when transfering a large file but smaller files seem slower over wireless.