Internet in Spurts. (Start, Accelerate, Stop. Start, Accelerate...)

The Internet connection on a fresh Windows 7 desktop is unstable. Downloads will start, accelerate and stop - working or stopping from anywhere between a second to a minute.

The desktop is part of a home network with other Windows 7 devices, which all work normally. LAN connection between desktop and rest of home network seems stable (100MB file transfers without noticeable problem).

Windows 7 32bit
SpeedTouch 546 Router
YUKON Marvell 88E8056 NIC

I would start by replacing the network driver with a newer version.

You can do this by going to the device manager in control panel then network adaptors and right clicking on the adaptor and update driver from there but it's sometimes best to go to the machines manufacture website and see if a newer driver is there.

Windows update might also have something that will help.

If that doesn't work please post your ipconfig/all here and we can take a look.

Thank you for chipping in.

I discovered to my surprise that the Marvel Yukon installation package doesn't automatically set the drivers which it installs as active.
After manually selecting the installed driver in Device Manager internet seems to have stabilized, but I am not quite sure if things weren't getting better anyway. Perhaps something else was interfering.

Interesting how if the drivers weren't active that the connection still partially worked anyway.

It might have been a channel crossover problem also. If it keeps dropping out try changing the wireless channel in your routers wireless set up page.