[Naz]

Cable modem wire connected to my PB?

Cable modem connected to Air Port Extreme with AirPort on?

Do I lose some download speed?

[Bruck]

For surfing, you will not notice a speed difference because the wireless connection (as long as its a strong signal) will not be the bottle neck. Basically your internet connection fits fine in the confinements of wireless, however if you want to do file transfers to users on your local network, then you will be limited by your wireless connection.

[smitty825]

Originally posted by Bruck:
For surfing, you will not notice a speed difference because the wireless connection (as long as its a strong signal) will not be the bottle neck. Basically your internet connection fits fine in the confinements of wireless, however if you want to do file transfers to users on your local network, then you will be limited by your wireless connection.

I fully agree with the above, but just to elaborate...copying files from one machine to the other will be much faster if you plug in an ethernet cable. You'll be pretty much limited to hard drive speed over a 100 base T network.

However, for web surfing...the slowest speed on your airport extreme is likely faster than your internet connection. (Unless you have something cool like an OC-192)