Dropped Connection

[24giovanni]

I have a win 98SE machine connected to a netgear router which is connected to a westell dsl modem. I use the software Mailwasher to check for my emails every minute but sometimes it loses it connection to the internet while checking for it. The same happens when I am trying to go to another web page. Sometime I lose it for seconds, someimes minutes and other times I have to reboot to regain connectivity. When I hook up a direct connection from dsl to comupter this does not happen.

What could be causing this? Other software I use is spyware guard, Popup Begone, Mailwasher. Could some of these be causing it? Could it be the router?

Any help is greatly appreciative.