Netgear MR814v2 wireless speed degradation?

Gang
this is an odd one. I thought my iPOD Touch firmware upgrade was the culprit, but taking it out to other wireless spots proves its sailing at high speed. So, my MR814v2 Netgear router has suddenly dropped speed rather drastically.

There are other symptoms here, now that I'm thinking through the last month or so. I have had to power-cycle the router several times due to just a "drop"... all the lights showed things OK, but XP pro on my hardwired desktops showed the router "gone", no connections. Reboot and everything comes back, except wireless speed.
Try to use the iPOD Touch for streaming vids and so forth and its basically unusable. If I run a speedtest out in the websphere, on the iPod I'm getting about 250kbps, which is about half what other similar configs [roadrunner highspeed] get. But worse, the throughput is full of stops and fits and jerks.

Any clues what to do? I'm thinking a hard reset [press the pin] is first try, then a new firmware download. If that doesn't fix, I'll probably go buy something else.

I must say, this router has been flawless for 2+ years up to now.

Zapp