wireless speedup/slowdown

[Trevor Smith]

Does anyone know why a connection from a wireless router would generally be at 
11mbps but then slow down to 5.5, down to 2, up to 5.5, down to 1, up to 2, 
etc.? The signal strength remains at or above 88% at all times, and does not 
fluctuate when these drops/jumps in "Connection speed" happen.

There is no one else in the house, no one using the XP machine that is also 
connected (by wire) to the router, the router presumably is not doing 
anything else. It's a high speed connection from the router to the wall 
(Internet connection from my local phone co.). And none of that should matter 
anyway, right? My KDE wireless monitor should only be measuring my speed to 
the router when it says 11mbs or 2mbps or whatever it reads currently, right?

Connections do seem very slow with this router/laptop combination today too. 
Web sites appear instantly on the wired machine, very slowly (even resolving 
hostname, etc.) on the laptop (same router).

But it's weird, hotmail.com, for example, pops up instantly on the XP machine, 
but takes forever to "resolve hostname" on the linux laptop -- even on 
multiple retries. Yet google and imdb.com pop up instantly on the laptop.

-- 
Trevor Smith // trevor at haligonian.com