New router for 3 winXP machines, what's wrong?

I was using an internal PCI router before with my current DSL modem and got about 200kB/s max download speeds... after too many headaches with the internal router, I decided to go with an SMC external router instead... install was a breeze! Much faster/easier than I ever would have imagined (compared to the internal one anyway)... but I noticed that when I go to download anything, even loading pics, the speeds are pathetic! I'm getting probably 10kB/s max even from microsoft

Is there something I'm overlooking?

make sure you do not have a clockrate set inside the router...you might have it set to like 56000 or something

There doesen't appear to be anything like that for me to configure... about the only value I can find is the MTU setting which is set to 1492 and recommends keeping it there :-\