Linksys → Linksys WRT54G Download speeds?

I have a Linksys wrt54g v6 FIRMWARE V1.02.8

I have cox communications and for the last year I have had a 50mb download speed and when I run a speed test using the one on the cox communications web site my speeds are consistently between 45 to 49 down.

Out of the blue yesterday I got an email from cox saying they just DOUBLED my download speed for free with no strings attached so I did a speed test on their site and I am still getting the same thing BUT when I connect directly from their modem to my nic card on the back of my computer I am getting between 128 and 140 mb down. So is my router limited to certain download speeds or is there something I can do to my linksys to take advantage of the new speeds coming into my house.

The device provided to me from cox is a ( CISCO / DPQ3212 )

Thanks in advance for any help.

time to retire the linksys.

Exactly. Ports are 100mbps. Be sure and replace it with at least Gigabit Ethernet (Ge, GigE and other names) speeds.

if ports are 100 then why can't I get 100?

Because there's a lot more involved in performance than the raw port speed. A consumer router designed in the 2007 time frame was shooting more for the 50mbps you're seeing. 100mbps is an ultimate limit but not the costly one of processing power.

If you're interested, I benchmarked similar hardware in 2008: »Benchmarking WRT Firmware... Some Surprises!
The winner was Tomato firmware at 58mbps.
Notice how even when it's LAN-to-LAN 85mbps was as good as I got. The penalty is because LAN-to-Internet requires more processing power.

EDIT: And sorry if I sounded like 100mbps ports was the ONLY reason. If you could magically change those ports to GigE you wouldn't see much gain.

My WRT54G v8 gets download speeds of 93Mbps from WAN to LAN. 100Mbps is theoretical. The data signaling rate actually observed on real networks is less than the theoretical maximum, due to the necessary header and trailer (addressing and error-detection bits) on every frame, the occasional "lost frame" due to noise, and time waiting after each sent frame for other devices on the network to finish transmitting. »en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fa ··· Ethernet

On the WRT54G routers, the limiting factor is the CPU or SoC, not the 100 Mbps port speed.

The older the version of the WRT54G, the less speed it can handle.

Oh crud ok. Guess what I read was incorrect, sorry.
Thanks for the the info.