prophecy welcome to the foum.
you can give tcp optimazer a try, it seems to do real good on bellsouth connections, you can get it here http://www.testmy.net/forum/t-11975
that router will have no problem going atleast 50 feet for like 150 feet. and it will go to the other floor no problem. You really can't go wrong with netgear they have a real solid product at a great price, and if you ever have a quesion they support is pertty good aswell.
HaZeX just a word of advice, like swimmer said the TOS is still in effect, so i would not run your server or port 8080 because that is the next most common port for a webserver in a home, i would pick odd port.
ive blocked it for the most part but there are a few simple ways to still get around it. she was using google to just search for it but i was able to block that but if she just types a specific domain she can still get to it.