(Does anybody else but me find it odd that most wireless routers out there now support 802.11n with theoretical speeds well north of 100Mb/s, yet GigE hasn't become a standard feature to actually let you get data in and out that fast?)
Not that strange, really. Because the people who do LOTS of internal file transfers are a very tiny percentage of the folks who purchase this type of thing.
So long as the wired/wireless ports are faster than the DSL connection, just about nobody ever gets any speed benefit from it over plain wireless-B.
Back to your current topic.. if you end up replacing the Netgear device, then go with a Speedtouch modem/router/ap,
and put some surge suppression on it this time! 
On both the phone line and on the power source.
Cheers