I’ve been having occasional problems with my Router which I’m having a beast of a time keeping continuously working. I have Comcast cable for an ISP with a modem and Linksys WRT54G using DD-WRT firmware which is up to date. Some devices in the house use ethernet to the router but I primarily rely on WiFi for most. I’ve had this router for a couple years, and about every 2 months I have to go down and fiddle with it to get things working again. Lately it’s happened every couple days, driving me a little batty and wasting too much time.

I’m happy to throw money at this problem if it will go away, but I’m unsure that this will help.

When this happens I can always connect to the router configuration page (192.168.1.1) so the in-house network is ok but cannot get out of the house on the Internet. I usually unplug everything and re-plug everything back in. Lately that doesn’t work, instead I follow a more complicated process:
1)I connect my laptop to the modem directly, usually succeed in getting online
2)Then power the modem off, connect it back to the router,
3)Power the modem back on, wait for it to finish booting and then connect to the router again.
4)Things work, usually.
I’ve posted my router configuration page here:
http://www.brettanddebbie.com/temp/1314_ne_51st%20-%20Setup.tif
http://www.brettanddebbie.com/temp/1314_ne_51st%20-%20Router%20Status.tif

Questions:

a)What causes this, or how could I figure that out?
b)Do I need a new (better quality) router, or is this something my ISP does I can’t avoid?
c)Is something on my router configuration causing the issue?
d)Is there a better forum for me to post this question?

(Here's a handy page on how to power cycle properly: http://jibwa.com/computer-tips-for-the-average-person/restart-cable-modem-and-router.html)