It may be your ISP. I say this because I moved to another one, the last one I had was stupid,slow upload\download(do I have to mention that 40 kb/s download is quite slow ?), the only positive aspect was the good ping.
But, when the messenger was on, the ping skyrocketed , and often I lost connection.
And certain problems could not be resolved without calling a stupid asshole who only asked me if "is the monitor on the bottom-right blinking or it's being crossed out with a red line?" , because I only had a cable coming in my house. The connections were made outside on a pole.
With my new ISP, I have the modem on my desk, so if I have serious problems ( really serious problems) I only restart it. If I have SUPER SERIOUS problems ( really rare) I just reset it. And it's a 6 mb/s connection