[willed]

Usually, thank god, I get to use the superfast net connection at university, but while at home I'm stuck on 56K. I can live with this, except that after about half an hour of browsing, or less, the connection usually cuts out. Internet Connect tells me that this is because the other side is not responding. I would therefore be inclined to blame the ISP, except that this never happens on either of the two family Wintels. Any ideas?

[Big Mac]

That's a strange issue willed - perhaps there's some sort of weird incompatibility between your Mac's modem and the ISP. Or maybe the phone jack you've connected your Mac to has extra noise on it. How are you sharing your connection? Do you simply have one machine dialed into your ISP at any given time, or do you have a router? If you don't have a router, I would purchase one (make sure it has a modem port, of course). Then you won't need to worry about your Mac, and all three computers will be online. You won't be able to surf concurrently very well, due to the modem constraint, but at least you'll have a better connection.