Router oddness?

[Smoof]

So for the past few weeks, I've been noticing a huge drop in my internet performance. Yesterday, I finally decided to do something about it, so I began testing. I went to Speedtest.net and noticed my speeds were incredibly low (what was weird is that my Up speeds were frequently far greater than my down speeds and I'm on cable). So I plugged my modem directly into my computer and all was well, I was getting the maximum speed possible. Obviously, I came to the conclusion that it was this crappy, old Linksys router and decided to replace it. Today, I went to Target with my girlfriend and picked up a Belkin N+ router. When I got home, I was getting ready to install it when I thought to do one more quick speedtest. So, without changing anything (but being back behind the Linkysis router), I speedtested and what do you know, my speeds are normal! As in, I'm getting 19Mbps down from a server in Utah, where yesterday I was getting around 1Mbps from the same server.
I just finished installing the Belkin and my speeds are the same as they were a moment ago when I tested it, fast. What should I do here? I worry that if I take the Belkin back (which I certainly wouldn't mind getting my $45 back (it was $90, but my girlfriend and I are splitting it), the Linksys will get up to its same old tricks again and fuck me around. But also, it's nice to have a newer router, because the Linksys is old as dirt, not to mention the fact that I hate linksys products.

What should I do here? I suppose I can always keep the Linksys as a backup, but if I don't need the Belkin, why do that? Also, is maybe just the Linksys going out and it has its up days and down....weeks? I know no one is leeching my internet, at least, I assume so, since I have a pretty hefty WPA key on my wireless.

[Mot Wakorb]

Depending on the old router - you may be able to update the firmware to something like DD-WRT (www.dd-wrt.com) instead - it may increase the performance. If you've got a working Belkin though, don't bother. Leave the Linksys behind and just move on.

[Rogue_hunter]

I found some oddity with speedtest.net. Choosing my local Los Angeles server, my speeds were lower than the initial 1.5 Mbps DSL I had two years ago before it got upped to 6 Mbps. Changing to the Phoenix server yielded speeds similar to what I should be getting/have been used to seeing.

Doubt it really helps much, just an oddity.

[Slack3r78]

Could be the router just getting flakey. I had to finally replace my trusty WRT54G v3 a couple of months ago because of similar issues. (though mine were with latency rather than throughput.

[Smoof]

It wasn't with speedtest in particular, but I noticed on my wired connections, like my HTPC, I was downloading some files (like the L2D2 trailer from IGN) at >(less than?)200k per second and when on wireless, downloading around 50k per second.

[nnanji]

When my friend's router was dying it went through periods of intermittent performance. Every time he would say, I'll just deal with this a while longer, because it always seems to work fine tomorrow. He put up with this (poor performance, headaches, dropping out of games where we were winning, etc) for two years, so it is possible to stretch out a dying router. Now that he finally replaced it though I have never seen him happier.

Stick with the Belkin.