All right, this has been going on for years, and I'm tired of it.
Sometimes whilst surfing the internets, my connection will seemingly just drop out for a few minutes (long enough to time out and reset). But I don't actually lose my connection, just my ability to load web pages.
I can still use instant messengers and can still play games online over Steam.
When I get back "online", my instant messenger will lose it's connection for a second before automatically reconnecting, and everything works again.
All browsers are affected when this happens [IE, FF, and Chrome], not just my primary [Opera]. It happens almost exclusively (and seemingly randomly) when I'm browsing FPS Banana, but it has happened elsewhere.
Googling hasn't helped me. Every result that comes up is someone who has actually lost their connection (or at least, a lot of people who think they've lost their connection).