In the past day the wifi download speeds of my Win 7 HP 64 bit laptop have slowed considerably. I am trying to troubleshoot the problem and to figure out whether it's hardware related (i.e., is the Intel(R) Centrino(R) Wireless-N 2230 the problem?) or router related.

I have a Netgear N300 router connected to my modem. I'm using Speedtest to measure my speed.

First, during my problem state, my ipad can download and upload at normal speeds. It's only my Win 7 laptop which is having problems.

Because my ipad downloads at normal speeds, that would tell me that the problem is specific to the laptop (either HW or SW). But when I restarted my Netgear router, the laptop wifi problems disappeared.

That just doesn't make sense. If we know that one device can connect properly to the router, why would a laptop have problems?

What are some possible reasons why this might happen? Also, during my problem state, I noticed that on my laptop upload speeds were faster than my download speeds. Anybody have a guess about what might cause upload speeds on one device to be faster than another?

Is there any actions i could take (or options to enable) so this problem won't occur.

(I initially thought my problem might be software related or memory related -- Norton AV or browser plugins. But even after I disabled everything and made sure memory footprint was minimal, the slowdown was still occurring -- and it solved itself altogether when the router was reset).