I am having the same problem. I am in Northwest Arkansas. I am paying for Cox Premier (100mbps). I have a laptop and a PC running windows 8.1.
So here is the story. Last month, I ran a Cox speed check and was receiving 48 mbps--about half of what I have been paying for since August of 2013. I was busy so I put off taking care of this issue until yesterday, when I ran another speed check and it was still hovering around 45-48 mbps. But lately over the last three weeks my internet connection has sporadically but increasingly been interrupted, and it would remain partially or completely interrupted until I reset the router/modem gateway (purchased from Cox in August 2013... a Netgear CG3000D), so yesterday, I decided to chat with Cox.
So during my on-line chat, guided by the Cox representative, I hardwired from the gateway to my lap top and got 110 mbps. Disconnecting the ethernet cable, on wireless, I received less than 50mbps on my lap top. So the Cox chat rep told me my gateway was showing "high time out numbers" or something to that effect, and that I needed a new gateway. OK, I understand that sometimes relatively new technology fails us, so I go to the Cox Solutions store and they are ready to sell me another gateway for $129. But I didn't buy one, instead I said, "just take me off premier and put me on preferred, since I am still getting around 50 mbps with this "defective" 18 month old gateway."
So that brings me to today, when I go to shop for gateways and find one on sale at a local retailer for $50 less than what Cox was trying to sell me. I buy the dual channel gateway, a Netgear C3700, fully compatible with Cox ISP and able to receive speeds up to 340 mbps. I hook it up, get it set up with the aid of a very nice woman from Cox on the phone, and I say "you know, please put me back on Premier, now that I have a nice new gateway." So she does, and she says to wait a while before running speed tests because it will take a bit for the speed to ramp back up. So I waited three hours.
After my wait, I ran the Cox speed test and got the same results as with the old gateway. I even got a 35 mbps reading once through the new gateway. Wirelessly, on both my PC and my lap top speeds are consistently sub 48mbps, never more than that. Yet plugging ethernet cable from gateway to laptop yields 110mbps. At this point, I don't even think that the old gateway was flawed and that Cox was just trying to do a bait and switch con job on me.
Oh, and I ran the Netgear Genie speed test as recommended above and got a 39Mbps reading.
So what is the deal? Is there problem with the wireless receivers in my computers? Does Windows 8.1 not play well with wireless internet? I feel like I have thrown a lot of money away over this now and I am becoming increasingly irritated with the universe. Please help!!!!