So the day before yesterday, my internet (COX) started cutting out every 20 minutes or so, for no apparent reason. I'd have to wait 20-30 seconds, and it would turn back on. There were no error messages, just the page would stop loading, or give the usual Firefox page cannot be found. When I say "internet" I mean, surfing the web with a browser. MSN, games, etc, did not expierance this cutout in service. I just assumed its my computer playing up and I need a fresh install of XP.

Well, yesterday, I tried to login to play a online video game (Team Fortress 2) on a particular server and I found that my ping was 20 times higher than normal, making it somewhat unplayable. I checked other servers, and it was more or less normal, except for one other. Other games do not seem to be affected. Puzzled, I rang a tracert, and I found after the 2nd hop it would say "request timed out". The server itself is located only a few kilometers away.

What could possibly have caused such a sudden burst in latency to one or two particular servers and not affect the other 1000 servers or so out there?

Why would my internet only cut out for browswers and not anything else?

So I have no real idea whats going on here, and I'm not sure if this is the right forum but if anyone knows anything that could help... I've tried resetting my modem and my router, and plugging the modem directly into my computer and turning off my firewall, and nothing seems to change it.

I've had a recent issue, sometimes my internet just would cut out as well, reset my router, updated drivers, etc etc. The whole bit. Finally last night I bought a PCI network card, disabled the built in on my mobo, so far no more problems. Might be something to at least try if you can find one cheap.

I tried a tracert on another computer and got the same issue

Also, another idea. Realize a lot of ISP's say they can give you more bandwidth than what they can. The idea being most of the time maybe only half the network might be used at a given time. So like when nobody else is on, you might get better speeds. It could be with the browsers, maybe as you're just surfing and reading it drops b/c it's not seeing a lot of traffic for your IP address. An idea might be a small pinging program. Basically a program that keeps generating fake traffic. We used to use that on dial up b/c they would disconnect you after a certain period of inactivity, but when I lived at home, mom and dad liked to keep the computer online constantly. So that was the way around that, b/c the ISP thought you were online, so they didn't boot you off.

Maybe they think you are more inactive so it's really trying to allocate the bandwidth it thinks is available to someone else.

Maybe a program like this would help??

http://www.download.com/BySoft-Sta [...] ag=lst-0-5

Don't know if it will or not, but sounds worth a shot.

Thats not it

How old is your modem? Could the cable/dsl modem be going bad on you? Do any of your friends have one you could test with? If not, maybe call the ISP and see what they say.