Welcome to the world of routers. Did you try the shields up at GRC.com? I have not used a software fire wall in years so I can not say how much they slow down your speed. I find a software firewall of no use unless you are trying to catch something going out but even then a smart spyware program will just turn off the firewall. So I stick with a router and windows firewall just in case my kid gets something on their computer.
As far as testing your speed forget about all the test sites here is how you do a real test.
go here and get netstat live a free program once installed and running right click on on it and go to configure and set to modem bits.
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www.analogx.com/contents ··· /nsl.htmThen head to one of these two sites and start a download let it run for a minute and NetStat will give you a running average of the last minute that will give you your real speed. One is http the other is FTP which should be faster.
Oddly I could not log in to the ftp site don't know if it moved or is down but you get the idea find a big file like a Linux distro and down load it for a bit to see your speed then cancel it. Of coarse you need to find a site that is serving at full speed and not getting hammered by others.
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speedtest.rochester.rr.com/»
ftp://
mirror.datapipe.net/gent ··· stallcd/