Comment 29 for bug 539794

A further thought on the situation:

4. Signal strength does make a difference here.
     At -69 to -67 dbm or three bars on the network manager icon, my broadband works works very well;
     At -73 or -72 dbm or two bars, my broadband is noticeably poorer; and
     At -75 dbm my broadband gives up.

I have the feeling the latest kernel may have much improved the SNR situation for the rt2500 hardware. In my case my broadband performance with Linux is now on a par with that of XP.

I get my dbms from iwconfig and my broadband test from SpeedTest.net. I get my broadband from Verizon FiOS, usually at about 15Mbps.