Bad throughput wireless to internet (LAN throug.... [SOLVED]

[grant.mcdorman]

I'm having a problem with wireless hosts on my network getting lousy Internet throughput - 1Kbyte/sec or lower, often stalling. (LAN throughput is pretty good, at somewhere around 2Mbyte/sec.) - Figures are reported by wget.

Wired clients get the full bandwidth of my Internet connection, at upwards of 400 Kbyte/sec.

The network topology is as follows:

• Two wireless clients (one desktop, WG311V2 card, using net-wireless/acx driver, WPA; one laptop, Intel ipw card).
  
• Three wired clients (100MBit Ethernet). One of those is also a laptop, with an internal Atheros wireless card (madwifi-ng driver). When on wireless only, it has the same problems as the other wireless hosts.
  
• One wired gateway/server (100MBit Ethernet) - Gentoo Linux, natch - 2nd Ethernet card connected to ADSL modem.
  

The router is a Netgear WGT624-V2, with latest firmware; it includes (like most such consumer routers) a firewalled Internet port. Router has nothing plugged in the Internet port.

All the client machines are dual boot Linux/Windows; the problem is independent of the OS.

All have static IPs in the 192.168.3.x range served by DHCP on the gateway/server. The DHCP server in the router is disabled.

Various configuration changes in the router - static/dynamic IP for the inactive Internet port, CTS/RTS threshold for wireless, firewall on/off, manual/automatic Internet connection - have had no effect. Note that the router includes RIP-1/RIP-2 support and static routes (neither of which seem to have any effect either).

It is not a signal problem - the throughput occurs with a laptop sitting right next to the router, and as mentioned intralan transfers do not have the problem.

Does anyone have any insights or suggestions as to how I might fix this?

Thanks.

[grant.mcdorman]

SOLVED.

It was, somehow, an issue with the antique 10BaseT (10MBit) Ethernet card in the Firewall connecting to the DSL Modem; a D-Link DE-528 card. (It is so old it has a coax connector on it.) How on earth this affected wireless traffic on the other side I don't know; however, after replacing it with a modern 100BaseT (RT8139 chip) card the problem went away. (The firewall-to-LAN card is also a 100BaseT, a 3Com 3c905C based card.)