Cat 5 good enough for dsl phone cable?

Hello,

I'm having some hefty issues with my interent (New Zealand, Xtra Go Large Plan). Apparently (according to my Netgear Wg834t wireless router) I have got;

DownStream Connection Speed 3328 kbps
UpStream Connection Speed 160 kbps

However I never get more than about 30kbps on a download to my computer (Sony Vaio fr315m, Win Xp Pro SP2, 1 gig RAM, 2.6Mhz processor, netgear W111t wireless adaptor). I have done all the usual things like checking for adware, viruses etc but with no avail.

Strangly, when I do some online speed tests {http://www.nzdsl.co.nz/module-Speedtest.phtml} I get download speeds simular to those above and when I do others {http://www.speedtest.net/} I get speeds of about 100kbps down and 100kbps up. When I ping to something US based, for example www.cnn.com, I get a timeout. When I do the same to www.bbc.co.uk I usually get one timeout and then an average of around 400ms (300ms if i ping directly from the router). A ping to www.trademe.co.nz i get an average of 70ms. Ping to my router is an average of 0.

I think I have exhuasted all my options for fixing this (ISP say its not their problem if the router is giving high readings), if anyone can think of something i've missed, please please let me know!.

Back to the original point of this post though... I'm starting to wonder if the telephone cabling in the house is the cause? I know its the old 2 pair wire. I've tried plugging the router into the first socket it comes to and wiring the lappy directly to the router but its no faster.

Would a whole house upgrade to Cat 5 cables do me any good? If so, is it worth the extra cost to go to cat 6? can I run voice over these and at the same time use the wall sockets for a network? If I put a microfilter on the Network Interface Device on the outside of the house, will that then umbrella all the sockets on the inside?

If anyone can shed some light on my problem, i'd be very grateful! $50 a month for slower than dial up is begining to get a little annoying!

 

All the phone cables questions aside, does anyone know of ways or settings within my computer that might be slowing this connections down? IE & Firefox are both slow. it takes me about 10 seconds to load a page!
Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

hmmm i have some ideas on this part, hopefully it would help.about the speed , website speed testers are actually not that accurate.i suggest try to directly connect the computer to modem and try to measure the speed so that you can isolate the problem ( and see if its the router or something else).well for the whole inside wiring rewire, i think it will cost but also will help.have you ever asked your ISP to run like a line/circuit test to check for the stability and possible latency on the circuit?i also suggest have your line at least looked at by your ISP's, im sure they can do that.also there is VOIP (voice over internet protocol) service that is out today, i suggest you check it out with your local ISP's.filter's will also help! rolleyes