[CORed]

I agree with Terry about ISP's. I think some of the poorer ones with not enough lines per customer will deliberately boot you to let somebody else connect, rather than give new connection attempt a busy signal. The quality of phone lines is also important. If you have noise/static on voice, you will also have disconnects and slow speeds on modem connections. This can result from problems with inside wiring or on the phone company network. I had this type of problems in one old house I lived in and eventurally checked wiring and found twist and tape splices. Running new cable helped a lot. If the problem's on the phone company network, all you can do is bitch at the phone company and hope they fix it.