how do i make my download speed faster or make it stop disconnecting?

when i'm downloading stuff, the absolute max is less than 180kb/s. it's fastest speed normally is around ~150kb/s. most of the time is only 100kb/s or less. when i used the speedtest.net it says my download speed is 1.03 Mb/s, but I don't know what that means. Is that 1.03 megabytes a second or megabit?? I don't really know the difference. And when I test the speed on my PS3 download speed tester, it gets about 800kb/s. but when I actually download something it is only like 50-150kb/s. my router is the linksys wrt54gs, the blue one. my ISP is covad. and also, whenver I'm on something like AIM, i always get disconnected. I always get the AOL system message thing that tells me i'm logged on at 2 places, which means i got dced and reconnected again. and sometimes when I download stuff, it gets dced in the middle of it. how do i make the download speed faster and stop this dcing?