Diagnosing connection issue

[edwardp-jjFNsPSvq+iXDw4h08c5KA at public.gmane.org]

This happens with both Linux and Windows, so it cannot be system 
software if two operating systems are involved.

When I pinged both the router and modem during these episodes, both 
respond to pings without any packet loss from either.

I will try a new NIC as the spare I have, is not compatible with Vista 
which caused a total system crash and to fix that, a system restore.  
After this, I did not bother trying it with 64- bit Ubuntu, although it 
works with the 32- bit release.