twisted_ed

I have link sys WRT54G v3 but with the lastest firmware available for it. Ok, I am new to this flashing thing, but heres the background to my problems. I had slow speed, conneciton problems and crap, tried everything, eventualy I found that if I were connected to my WRT54G by cord, port forwarding was open and my download speeds were at best 100kbs. Wirelessly on my laptop, test port function will not find a forwarding port and thus forwarding is not working and mabe one file in a million will download at 2 kbs. I have not flashed my router yet becuase if it wont restore my wireless is there a point? I can dload at up to 100 kbps so If I were to reflash my router, will my wireless work, like, will test port funciton find an open port? and will my speeds become faster than 100kbps? why do people need to reboot their modem, is this as simple as unplugging the power or is it holding the reset button for longer than 30 seconds. Can I restore my router to its original programming? or is it forever reflashed. Also for a beginner which is the easiest to flash that will allow me trouble free setup and running of utorrent without needing to reboot the modem (assuming thats possible)