Would that do anything to explain the the drop in speed since the upgrade. I used to download from newsgroups at a rate of 1,200KBps, which from my limited knowledge is the full speed of 10Mb broadband. Since the upgrade on the same router and laptop it's slowed to around 500KBps, which is about 4Mb broadband?
How do I find out if my laptop's adapter supports Wireless N? Am I eventually going to need a wireless N router even if the slow down is a different problem? Just want to be 100% sure it's something I need before I spend money on it.
You can safely ignore the "advice" regarding your "need" for wireless-N; first, their math is flawed; the speedtest.net speed you are being given is already in megabits per second, and last I checked the speed you are getting of 2.59mbps is nowhere near the Wireless-G speed of 54mbps, and I doubt it has anything to do with signal degradation, because I would hope that was the first thing you checked (if it is and you can't seem to get a good signal though, I'd suspect the "missing antenna" issue, I've seen it happen before). Aside from that, the router configuration could have been changed (or, if they replaced the router entirely, it may not have an optimal setup (it may be configured for wireless-a/b, which in may cases would have about the given speeds)
All that said, clearly, as you've noted- the difference started when they replaced what I would imagine was your access point; either your wireless router, or something similar- either that, or they may have changed settings inadvertently or otherwise. It could even be something as conspicuous as one of the antennas or the antenna having been removed during installation and simply not replaced.
