"Usual symptom: if you are on a UUNET server (old servers), try a CERFnet
server (a recent one). If you can get in, then you have "transient"
connectivity block. Sweat it "

Nope I don't think that is it. There have been no banners or anything, I
use Cazic Thule server and so far it's been pretty reliable.and crowded. I
am begining to think the problem may be either my modem or my ISP I have a
winmodem and i understand from some recent articals that they aren't really
very good and use some of the cpu to process the data comming in ans
therefor slow my system down.