think you have some problems with configuration
wl500gP Oleg`s firmware, the latest...
i formatted my usb hard drive to ext3 and the problem had occured... upload\download speed on my ftp-server is about 100-200Kb\s (very sloooooooooooow)
i used fat32 file system and has no problem with the speed... 2Mb\s average...
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Q: Why with ext3 is so slow? (i want 2 use files bigger than 2Gb, that Fat32 don`t support)
think you have some problems with configuration