Help with losing Internet connection

[comic2b]

I have the almost same set up for the past year. The exact same setup for the past three months. I'm getting a dropped connection or timeout error, mostly on Pokerstars.

What happens is I'm connected on Stars, and I'm generally playing a couple of games on Absolute as well. I also am always running Pokertracker Omaha, PAHUD. Almost always I have Firefox running, and Outlook. Sometimes I'm playing a Holdem tourney as well and will have Pokertracker Hold'em as well.

My computer is one year old. It has Athlon 3500+ processor, 1gig Ram, 200 GB HD. I switched from DSL to cable about 3 months ago.

The problems only started about one month ago. I have made no configuration changes or added new software.

My three theories

1) Cable Internet sucks, and I should switch back to DSL. I really don't want to do this; cost more and migration effort.
2) My Pokertracker DB's are two big and slow down performace that it times out.
3) Stars has gotten too big and needs to upgrade its servers. Why upgrade network if you might pull out of market.

Any help is greatly appreciated.