I don't get that. I have FIOS and it smokes. In games my ping is often lower than anyone else's by far. I also never have to enter authentication. It's true that XP does not retain the WEP security code, but that doesn't have to be an issue. If the PC is connected by LAN, it's trusted. Wireless is a different story.

I'm thinking what you need to do is set your wireless device(s) as trusted in the router configuration. This is done by getting the MAC address for each device and entering it into a table in the router's firmware. If you have the ActionTec, it can be intimidating at first, but once you get past the initial entry points the setup itself is fairly self-explanatory. See below