Will you've got it a little wrong.

Swtiches have 5 ports, nothings assigned. It'* basically splitting the cable, into indivudual devices. The ISP will see everything hooked up to it.

A router splits it like a swtich, and normally adds a gateway, with NAT. This way, the uplink is one network, and the LAN is another.

If you plug a Switch into our ethernet drops here in the dorms and add 4 computers, they'll each have their own public IP. If you plug in a router, and register one computer, that Information is setup on the routers settings, and the ISP will only see one Public IP.

They pretty much have it right above. In a Linksys, you have to do a lot of manual configuration, figuring about all your addresses and such. It can be a pain. I used to have one, and I didn't like it.

If you are reallly having trouble, a D-Link will configure itself. Same price.

Define slow? Slow getting to websites? Slow downloading? How are you making the comparison?

Your linksys shouldn't slow your internet connection down AT ALL....try using the connection without the linksys, download a test file, and then try it again with the linksys.

I guarantee you your linksys is not causing the problem.