Intermittant Internet/Outlook connection issues

Ever since I began using Vista Home Premium, I've had intermittant connection

issues both with the internet and on e-mail. Most of the time everything

works fine, but about 3 times a day, the connections won't go through. The

problem can be solved either by retrying several times or by closing

IE/7Outlook and starting over. Very annoying. I know it's not the Verizon

dsl connection, since my wife is hard wired, via XP, to the same modem as I

am, and her connections work fine. I thought it might be Norton 2007's

firewall, but I tried everything they suggested with no ultimate effect.

It's not IE7, since the same problem occurs if I use Firefox.

I would greatly appreciate any suggestions anyone may have.

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SFB