My network card is acting up, or how Minecraft likes to shut down my internet

[PyromanDan]

For as long as smp as existed, randomly, on a laggy server or not, I will basically lag out.
Actions are undone, and everyone stops moving.
30 sec later Im givin a "socket disconnected by peer" error.
Anyone online who has had this problem has had it fixed by messing with their network card.
This is going to be a little long, but I'll try to paragraph it to make it easier on the eyes.

Back before SMP came out, lightning hit my internet, going through my router,
disabling 2 of its bridges, going up my cable, and into my ethernet port on my motherboard.
Im not going to delve deep on that topic atm but it ended up with no visable damage, and even after a motherboard driver reinstall I had to get a network card.

I got my hands on a TRENDnet Gigabit PCI network adapter.
Installed it, worked as good (if not better) than my mobo's port. I was happy to be back.
SMP comes along (multiplayer), and I start to see this problem. from the first multiplayer release, this has happened. itll randomly time me out and turn off my internet,
to the extent of me having to manually reconnect my cable.

When this happens every 5 min you can understand my grief.
I try going directly to my modem, no change.
Different modem? no change.
so I wonder, is it my connection? I get a friend to bring his rig over,
and he doesnt get that shit ONE BIT.
I reinstall my OS (XP SP3), and the networking card's drivers as well (obviously).
all seems good, and then I try it out. No change.
So here I am facepunch.

Could it be my Operating system being a total javadick? or is it my network card?
and no, I have the latest drivers on my card.

once more, windows xp sp3, 4gig 800ddr2 ram (runs as 3.12 or w/e since os), 2x 9800GTnvidia cards SLI'd with effectively 1g of vram, and I cant identify my mobo atm.

also, from another thread, someone asked if my dns was set to a certain one and not auto-obtain,
[img]http://gyazo.com/98ae7a60e74dc1cb0c62bab978827b9c.png[/img]

Thanks again and lets see if this gets anywhere!