Need Help Please

[crossed]

For the last 6 months my internet has had some serious problems.

From 11:40 am to maybe about 8:00 pm my internet will drop and then reconnect seconds or minutes later. Each time it drops it seems to cap the speed of my internet randomly, sometimes capping at 56k-like speeds when I pay for a 5mb connection!

Between this time-frame I am lucky to have 1 hour of continuous internet connection, sometimes the internet will be dropping and reconnecting more than 20 times an hour!!!
This makes it impossible to play online games at all.

Calling my ISP is useless, I'm on hold for hours and every time I call they always give me a different excuse, it's very obvious they either don't have a clue or don't care, or both. Switching to another ISP isn't an option because of where I live.

Facts:
I have DSL and there is a filter on my phone.
All devices connected to my router lose internet, Ethernet and wireless.
I've tried running only 1 device with all the other devices off to see if one of them might be causing the disconnection and the disconnection happens no matter which device is offline or online.
I'm just picking up on this now but for the last 2 days the first time my internet drops to start the chain of sporadic disconnections has been exactly at 11:40 am.
My router is http://www.actiontec.com/support/product_details.php?pid=73

Please if anyone has any ideas, I've never encountered a problem like this before.

 

[PhilFrisbie]

How many phone jacks do you have in your house? All the phone wires in your house act like a large antenna collecting radio interference that can interfere with your DSL connection.

Here is what I would do (and have done when I had DSL):

Purchase a whole house DSL filter, one that has line in, phone out, and DSL out connections. Go out to your DMARK box on the side of your home. Unplug the cable that goes into your home, and connect it to the phone out on the DSL filter. Connect a short cable from the now empty jack to the in on the filter. Run a new phone cable (solid only!) to your DSL modem. Connect it to a wall jack near the modem, and to the filter in the DMARC box.

This will GREATLY increase the reliability of your DSL connection, and you will no longer need to use DSL filters inside your home.