USB 1.1 Tops out at 12Mbps, or rather ~ 900KiB/s - 1.2MiBytes/sec. So that's most likely not the bottle neck. I would check if your adapter is getting good reception.
You should be getting close to 802.11b speeds, or there-abouts as that is close to the speed of the original Spec.
Also keep in mind, your system, if it uses WPA, will be doing all the encryption/decryption on your iBook Processor. If the CPU can't keep up and do other things, your CPU might be bogged down. Just keep that in mind since the internal Airport would to WEP-128 on an internal processor on the card.
Usually USB Wireless adapters just capture the signal, send it to the driver and the driver uses your CPU to do the calculations. This can lead to speed slow downs as the CPU is doing a lot at once (web browsing, OS, etc...) and not being able to offload.
You would be better setting up a guest network, or secondary WEP network (802.11b) that is segregated (for security) and getting an internal airport card for the iBook. That's your best bet.
Just my $0.02
You should be getting close to 802.11b speeds, or there-abouts as that is close to the speed of the original Spec.
Also keep in mind, your system, if it uses WPA, will be doing all the encryption/decryption on your iBook Processor. If the CPU can't keep up and do other things, your CPU might be bogged down. Just keep that in mind since the internal Airport would to WEP-128 on an internal processor on the card.
Usually USB Wireless adapters just capture the signal, send it to the driver and the driver uses your CPU to do the calculations. This can lead to speed slow downs as the CPU is doing a lot at once (web browsing, OS, etc...) and not being able to offload.
You would be better setting up a guest network, or secondary WEP network (802.11b) that is segregated (for security) and getting an internal airport card for the iBook. That's your best bet.
Just my $0.02