Molasses for Wireless

[MrDead]

Ever since installing Ubuntu (I am currently running 9.04) I've had endless problems with my Internet connections: intermittent connection loss, slow download speeds, complete loss of connection, etc. For a while me and my Internet had a rocky, but stable, relationship; however, now my erstwhile partner has turned sour, and I am getting incredibly slow connection speeds compounded with an unstable connection. For instance: I have FiOS (I think it's rated at 10mbps) and I am only getting maximum speeds of 200 kbps, and normal speeds of 90-100 kbps; additionally my connection sometimes gets it in its head that it needs a rest so it shuts off for a little while and then needs some serious coaxing to get it up again.
I am using a Ralink 148f:2870 USB wireless device with an RT2870 driver (not ndiswrapper).

Here is my iwconfig output:
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

pan0 no wireless extensions.

ra0 RT2870 Wireless ESSID:"6ECL2" Nickname:"RT2870STA"
Mode:Managed Frequency=2.412 GHz Access Point: 00:1F:90:EE:E1:28
Bit Rate=48 Mb/s
RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Link Quality=67/100 Signal level:-72 dBm Noise level:-71 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

Here is my lshw -C Network output:
*-network
description: Ethernet interface
product: L1e Gigabit Ethernet Adapter
vendor: Attansic Technology Corp.
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
logical name: eth0
version: b0
serial: 00:24:8c:37:81:36
capacity: 1GB/s
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=ATL1E driverversion=1.0.0.7-NAPI firmware=L1e latency=0 link=no module=atl1e multicast=yes port=twisted pair
*-network:0 DISABLED
description: Ethernet interface
physical id: 1
logical name: pan0
serial: 86:24:a2:dd:0d:57
capabilities: ethernet physical
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=bridge driverversion=2.3 firmware=N/A link=yes multicast=yes
*-network:1
description: Wireless interface
physical id: 2
logical name: ra0
serial: 00:18:e7:4a:48:b6
capabilities: ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes ip=192.168.1.6 multicast=yes wireless=RT2870 Wireless

Here is my ifconfig output:
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:24:8c:37:81:36
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:3
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
Interrupt:252

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:847291 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:847291 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:214099311 (214.0 MB) TX bytes:214099311 (214.0 MB)

ra0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:18:e7:4a:48:b6
inet addr:192.168.1.6 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::218:e7ff:fe4a:48b6/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:31415 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:18191 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:30703058 (30.7 MB) TX bytes:1916038 (1.9 MB

I hope any of this information can help,

Thank You Very Much

[MrDead]

Bump, plus this also somehow restricts bittorrent download speeds and number of seeders. However it hardly effects bittorent upload speeds which easily reach around 300 kbps, which is comparable to what I had been getting.