Hopefully someone can shed some light on this. 
My client is connecting to the internet using Blueyonder Cable (UK).
In this case, you have a NIC card in the PC, register the MAC address
of the card with the provider and then that PC can connect to the
interweb. Although you can register more than 1 MAC address per
customer, you can only connect one at once. Once the card is verified,
Blueyonder assigns a Dynamic IP.

Now, he wants to create a network between the pc on the internet and a
new pc (both running XP Pro) and share the internet connection. He has
bought a Belkin 4 port 10/100 switch /cable/DSL router.

Ok, the router provides a feature that clones the MAC address of the
registered card therfore allowing the computers connected to it to
access the interweb. Cool idea me thinks!

I have connected the pc's to the router and they have networked nicely
at 100mb. All of the computers can access the internet but about 100
times slower. A ping to google.com in DOS normally returns 19ms 4
times. Now through the router it will return 1 packet at 19ms and the
rest will time out. Or the first 2 echos will time out and the last 2
work?. The same with webpages, it will load one image or part of a
page and time out after that.

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Request for Question Clarification by juggler-ga on 17 Sep 2002 10:47 PDT

Aspnewby:

I have the same Belkin 4-port Cable/DSL router. Internet access was
very slow until I upgraded the firmware.
http://web.belkin.com/support/download/download.asp?download=F5D5230-4&lang=1&mode=
Have you tried this?

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Clarification of Question by aspnewby-ga on 18 Sep 2002 00:59 PDT

Yes, i have tried the latest firmware update and still no joy.

I also forgot to mention the network cards are Netgear FA330s Hope
this helps and thanks for looking into this.

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Request for Question Clarification by gnovos-ga on 02 Oct 2002 15:54 PDT

Do you have the firewall turned on on those two XP machines?

Well, if the local net is connecting nicely at 100mb, and when a
single comp is connected to the web timing is good, why don't you use
internet connection sharing to connect the local (fast) net to the web
via the "main" computer. Obviously you will not be using the routing
functionality, just the switch. I have such configuration (with
different hardware) and it works perfectly. It is also more secure
(NAT).

Just a suggestion.

Hmm, I dont think your problem is a firmware update my friend..
One of two things will solve your problem:

1) Check for a network.vbs in your startup folder, if you have one,
that is your problem..

2) Or this is probably the solution.  One or more of your network
cards are doing what they call "pooling"  If you disable Pooling for
your card, that'll do the trick.