as Christ said (and the first thing techs here will tell you), power down computer, then unplug your modem wait about ten minutes, plug your modem back in, wait another ten, then fire up your computer (i also unplug my wifi router). i'm lucky, modem's here are supplied free by my ISP, i had a problem with disconnects/signal drops last week, tech came the next day, checked and tightened connections on pole top, and installed a new modem (all free), solved my problem, but, yeah, sounds very likely its the firmware update.