Internet Issues - Seemingly Random

Hello all,

I've been having some Internet issues recently. They seem to affect our entire home network, but the Internet is not inaccessible entirely. For periods of anywhere from a few minutes to almost a half hour, pages seem to load incredibly slow (and often not at all). Streaming applications have trouble completely connecting (such as online games and VOIP), and in the rare events they do they usually end up disconnecting from time outs.

The same issue appears to affect all computers in the home network. We initially believed the problem to lie outside of our home network. However, calling support from the ISP and having someone come out to inspect the issue has been unhelpful (they claimed there was nothing wrong and perhaps we should try tightening wires if it happens again -- the problem wasn't happening while they were there). The problems also seem more frequent in the afternoon, but it's happened in the mornings as well.

Part of my problem is that I have no idea how to go about troubleshooting an issue like this. The Event Viewer on Windows shows DNS failures in the log sporadically during the time of the issues (Name resolution for the name _ timed out after none of the configured DNS servers responded.). Running PingPlotter against google.com shows some pings never reach google (or at least never return) but others do, even during the problem timeframe (See below image). The router suggests that it is not even connected to the Internet.


Any help would be appreciated. I'll include some information about our network setup below.

Router: Netgear WNDR3400v2, Firmware v1.0.0.34_1.0.52
Modem: Motorola Surfboard SB5120
Main Computer OS: Windows 8
(When it's working right, our ping is often under 80 for this service)

Thanks for any help you can provide.