Ok well first thing is first. There are best practices in every industry and most IT guys (I'd consider myself on the good/novice level of this scale) will tell you that you always isolate these - I've never seen (outside of a home or small business) a server closet that has computers plugged into the router.
There are two other things - home/retail grade linksys routers like a WRT54G or even the newer ones like WRT310N, etc. all have a certain life span - they get old & die. Next is that they use a VERY small and slow processor which can limit the throughput even on a 1:1 wired network down to something pretty slow.
The way to maximize or optimize your hardware's performance is to let each device do what it does best. A home/retail grade router is a ROUTER - not a switch. The router can use a lot of CPU and RAM just to handle switched network traffic (like if you have file sharing turned on or a Network Storage Device). These little home routers aren't robust enough to handle switching network traffic AND handling bandwidth throughput in excess of ~25mbps.
A switch is a dumb device that will "switch" network traffic. It has its own processor so even at the home level you'll now have two devices, each with RAM and a CPU - your router can route traffic and your switch can switch traffic - but switches are bad at routing and routers are bad (or not always great) at switching.
Windows constantly sends out ping packets to other devices on the network (think LAN/Intranet). These things can all be turned off on each Windows machine but that's a pain for your wife or your kids. OR - you can let the switch handle it because it's all internal traffic that the switch is built & designed to handle.
Let's say you have a little D-Link NAS with a few movies and some music on it. If your kids want to stream a movie and you have both the NAS and the computer plugged into the router then the router has to handle that switch traffic. It's CPU & RAM will have to process & buffer the entire movie as well as your wireless traffic (think iPhones, iPads, BlackBerrys, Android, etc.).
If you have a switch and both the PC and the NAS are plugged into that switch then the switch handles 100% of that movie's data transfer. You could unplug the router from the wall and still stream that movie - so this just frees up system resources on the router to do routing only functions. It makes a big difference.
These little home setups end up trying to perform functions of a high-end router, switch, DHCP server, Wireless Access Point - all for about $100. What ends up happening is that the engineers make compromises so they are capable of performing each task but they don't do any of them really well (this is especially true of the routers with wireless + wired all-in-one types).
Because this stuff gets so cheap and so fast you can go out and buy a few extra devices - you'll have an 8 or 16 port switch so now your wife won't need you to plug & unplug from the router.
The easiest way to look at it is to view your router as a device that handles your bandwidth and assigns IPs on the network.
Let the switch handle the network traffic.
I'm not saying everyone MUST adhere to these rules - if you are happy with your connectivity might as well KISS and leave it alone. If you are having issues however, you can turn a home setup into something that is equal to most small prop groups, hedge funds or other larger businesses not in finance.
Yes 100% - that'll give you an accurate idea of whether or not you are getting what you pay for.
On the other hand, you should be getting the same numbers directly from the modem or through a router and series of switches - if not the signal has degraded along the way and you have issues.
). They are both MORE than fine to handle your needs. The PT can handle really up to a full gig connection but the MT is starting to get a bit old and I don't like using them in applications requiring over 100mbit sustained @ full duplex. 