Internet Throughput

the problem with the slowdown/timeout is unpatched windows systems.
( not saying yours )

dos attacks / virus activity online causes traffic, which slows legit traffic down.
( kind of like that sunday driver in front of you during rush hour )

Scan the entire network and server for viruses, along with all desktops.

Run ADAWARE or Spybot to remove any spyware from the desktops,(common for network internet slowdowns), one computer has spyware and the whole mess gets hung up waiting for it.

Take the internet modem down for 15 minutes and reboot it.

If you interface to your ISP with a Cisco router then MRTG traffic graphing is a good start and utilising IP Accounting logging will give you a good idea on traffic flow.

There is a Perl utility called "Cisco IP Accounting Fetcher" or similar that fetches and tabulates CISCO ip accounting logs - it's pretty good.

All this data is obtained via snmp.

Not sure if that helps, but hope so.
Good luck,
Dave

As well as the above answers... your ISP logs usage. Ask them about your stats. If you are not sending anything out, but have a similar or greater upload vs download transfer total, you are more than likely infected with spyware or malware.

You can also run 'bandwidth speed tests' which are not really accurate anyways, but they will give you a general idea. Try this test from an isolated gateway, and then later from within your network. Compare the results of the two. Just google the above quote, and you will alnd on quite a few helpful links with speed test buttons.

If you have an MS network, there are network monitor utilities that are native to NT based systems (at least as of 2k). You can monitor your individual machines using the tool.

I think perfmon will answer this question...go to run>type in "perfmon"

When you are in there, you will need to add counters. You must do this on the actual server, not your machine. Click the plus sign to add a counter and under "performance object" you will need to look for NTDS (i think). Look through those counters and add appropriately. Run this for a couple days, and it should tell you if it's your web server. If it's not...it's your ISP. Hope this helps :)

Cisco routers, which forms most the the internetwork router backbones of the internet has SNMP tools in which to monitor bandwidth usage. Tracert also can collect information on routers in the path from source to destination and which ones within that path cause bottlenecks. Neo.com has a program for monitoring devices using SNMP but that assumes you can obtain SNMP information from those devices.

broadbandreports.com is a source of information on DSL broadband. They have a broadband monitoring service per IP address at a nominal cost. here's a link: http://www.broadbandreports.com/schedule

They also have a router watch service which monitors different broadband service provider routers and graphs packet loss on their routers. Its a really good information source on ISPs bandwidth availability and connection quality. Heres a link to their bad router watch page. http://www.broadbandreports.com/badrouters