Not only did I find the solution to my problem, but I also found a couple of ways on how to further improve my Internet speed on Ubuntu to feel even snappier then how it was on Windows. More here

After the upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10 (which rocks my left sock) I decided to do some searching around to see if anyone else had this problem occuring to them as well. What I found was that a fair amount of other Ubuntu users had similar symptoms. So at that point I was determined to find a solution — but what I found was even greater then what I was originally looking for.