Data Flow

Some background info before I describe the problem:
P111 866 Hz
128 Mb RAM
32 Mb Riva TNT 2 M64
20 GB HDD
Win ME
Motorola 56KB V.90 Internal Model
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After having formatted my computer and setting up everything for the internet, I began to experience a very irritating problem. When the internet works, it works well and I experience no minor problems. However, at periodical intervals, say every 15 minutes, no data is sent or received for about 30 seconds to 2 minutes. In this time I can't do anything on the internet as no data is being sent or received. This is paticullarly irritating fo reasons such as net games and needing to check emails/other misc. schedules quickly.

Any help would be very much appreciated.