"Strange" Connection loss

[Mecha Dude]

For a week now my computer has been loosing connection for a few seconds, up to perhaps a minute. I had no idea what was wrong. Contacting the cable connection providor only resulted in them informing me it was my router at 'fault'. Fine I removed my router, and installed ZoneAlarm (only a fool connects to the internet naked :>). The problem was gone but after half a day my connection started to drop once again, equaling what it was before. ZoneAlarm was reporting 500 attempted connections a day most of them in relation to the ports 6881 (used by Bittorrent).

My solution I discoverd is a sad one, but effective, I just released my current IP, and recived a new IP. I have not recived any further connection attempts, and have not lost connection. Now I'm wondering why this was happening, how could singular malformed packets (I'm assuming that's what they are) cause my system to drop connection?

The system is Windows XP Pro.