Hi Drmemory ,
I gave you Google and Yahoo as an example ,but the packet loss is for all internet address that are pingable .
I live in Canada and my ISP is Shaw cable with a motorola Surfboard SB5101.
I tried for the 2nd time to re-install DD-Wrt and i disable firewall but i had the exact same problem of packet loss when pinging internet addresses put no packet loss pinging the router (from wired and wireless connection).
Other than the packet loss ,i noticed also that the reply time fluctuate too much when pinging the router and internet addresses(using wired and wireless connection ) and it was too high ,for example reply time pinging yahoo is from 99 to 220 ms,pinging the router is 20ms.
Moreover the wireless signal constantly changing to the worst ,for example when i use Band Width 40 MHZ the connection on the laptop start at 270Mbps then keep dropping till it reaches 135Mbps .(i am using N wireless)
I switched back to the Buffalo Firmware and everything is working like normal ,no more packet loss and the reply time pinging yahoo is 60ms constant ,pinging the router is 2 ms.
But with Buffalo firmware ,using band width 20 ,the max connection speed is 65 Mbps and with Band Width 40 the Max connection speed is 150Mbps ,i don't know why i am not getting to 300 Mbps,i double check my wireless adapter to use auto(20/40).