New Connection problems...

Lately Ive been having a problem that I may not directly be related to EverQuest, but Im wondering if anyone has experienced this and may know whats up.
Scenario 1) I'm in EQ and everything seems normal, when all the sudden the number on the far right of the connect meter goes way up to 3000 - 4000. At this point I no longer seem to be able to do anything in game, but I do see updates such as tells and chats etc. Shortly there after my % numbers start to climb until I get "you have been disconnected."

When this happens 9 times out of 10 I end up at server select and can immediately go back into the game, but usually it keeps happening over and over for several hours at least.

Scenario 2) I am NOT in EQ but I am browsing the Internet. I am fine for a while, then mysteriously pages start to time out and/or downloads in progress fail. This can go on for several minutes then pages are fine again with no action taken by myself. This problem also can go on for hours at a time.


So far I havent been able to narrow this down since it happens both in EQ and out of it. I have called AT&T Internet support and they cant find any problems. When this problem happens I am unable to connect to my modems built in web page (admin stuff etc) which makes me think it has gone down. However, when I look at the modem during one of these times all appears normal.


Today I put up Sygate firewall on my PC just to track what is trying to get in/out and the only thing I see that I dont recognize is NDIS User I/O. I blocked that and still have this problem so I dont think it's related.

This problem occurs whether only My PC is online or all 3 of the PCs are online. When I have the problem, if one of the others is online, they also have the problem.

Do any of you have any further suggestions on what I could look for?

My system:
P4 1500
768mb Ram
SBLive!
Geforce 2 64mb
NiC connection to Cable internet
Latest drivers and no sharing IRQs
Windows XP fresh installed