How often does your Internet access fail?

It seems my Internet access at home fails pretty frequently. I would say it is down at least 5 times a year or so, and when it is down it can be out for several hours. It is out at the moment in fact.

I don’t want to trash the ISPs – just wondering what the typical downtime per year people see with various technologies – DSL, Cable, T1?

I have noticed that often when the Internet is down, it is only the DNS service which is down. For example, you can still ping sites as long as you know the specific IP address. Anybody else notice this?

Thanks in advance for any replies…