What the Pomegranate!

Ok, so I get home from from vacation with my brand new laptop. We have a wireless router here, which is an Airlink 101 N router. The router is within like 6 feet of my laptop. The connection appears to be "Excellent" but I get 20-30 kBps download speeds. I plugged my laptop directly into the modem to see if it was our ISP and I got 600-900 kBps. My modem goes directly into the router and then into the crappy 10/100 desktop, so I know my network is set up in the fastest possible way. I am eager to be able to watch videos without lag, so I tried grabbing an ethernet cable and plugging it into my router's switch, and the other end into my laptop. Since its me, there HAS to be issues. It will sit there on "Identifying..." for a few minutes and then I get the "Limited or No Connectivity" thingy.

My xbox uses the ethernet perfectly fine. Same cable from the same place.

Two questions
1.) Why is my wifi so much slower than if I plug my laptop into the modem? It's Wireless N, I have 10/100/1000 on my laptop, and its only 6 feet away! 20-60 kBps is at least 80% slower than what I should have.

2.) Why is my computer not being identified? Isn't that the point of the switch on the router? To eliminate this problem?

Actual Screenshot

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POMEGRANATE

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Try turning off wifi on your laptop if you're going to wire your connection. Check the adapter settings (ip V4) for each and make sure you have selected to obtain an ip and dns automatically. Also, what switch on your router are you talking about? If it's that switch that lets you connect without a password (press the button and it auto-negotiates with the computer), then you shouldn't be hitting that after you've set up the connection for the first time.

For the speed issues, are you able to log into your router and check the settings and whatnot? You could see if other people are using the signal and hogging your speed. Does your connection have a passphrase to protect it from random people accessing it?

For some unknown reason, its working now! I didn't really do anything... but thanks for the help!

I made sure there was a password and updated the router's firmware. Thanks!

No problem. Both are good things to do I guess, although updating the firmware on a router is a crapshoot, so most of the time you shouldn't do it unless you are having problems and know it will fix them. Hopefully it stays working