Paddymac, there was a long downtime this weekend but other than that, there have only been short down times that I am aware of.

The ISP problem is a hard one to diagnose but in the first instance,I would suggest trying ragtime mentioned above (which was down last time I tried it). You could also try accessing other web sites, checking email etc. I have problems with my ISP (and my previous one but not quite as bad) that cause page unavailable/DNS error messages and I have found that to be a reasonable indication as to where the problem lies. I could be wrong but I would suspect that the bulk of your problem does lie with your ISP.

Jon