Hello, I have Bellsouth DSL in Lenoir, NC. Two computers use the DSL through a Netgear WGR614v5 router; my mom's, as well as mine. This arrangement has worked for a while now, but recently, her computer has had some curious symptoms.
One evening, she called me into her room, because no pages would load. I tried loading a couple different sites to make sure it wasn't just the site she was using, but HTTP was indeed not working. But then I noticed that her trillian messenger program was still connected, and to test it, I sent a message to myself, which was properly passed through. And all of a sudden, her HTTP works again.
But the next day, it happened again, and curious to see if it'd "solve" the problem, I sent myself another IM message, and it worked after that.
In a way, it seems that the Internet connection is kind of "dozing off to sleep," though messenger "wakes it up."
Anyway, this is annoying her, because in order to get anything done, she has to send me senseless messages just so that HTTP will work again.
What would you say is a solution to this problem? Are there any steps I can go through to give you more info?
HARDWARE:
Dell desktop (Mom's, wired)
Home-built desktop (mine, wired)
Netgear WGR614v5 wired/wireless router
Netopia 2241N-006 DSL modem
SOFTWARE:
Windows XP Home SP1
MS Office XP
Open Office v2
AVG (the newest version)
Firefox 2.0
Trillian Basic 3 (Cerulean Studios)
That's about the only extra software that she has on there.
I have even moved her cable from #3 to #2 on the router to see if that would help any, and it hasn't.
Another note: my computer has not had these issues.

Chowhound
Comic Vine
GameFAQs
GameSpot
Giant Bomb
TechRepublic