A purely technical geek related quandary: Help Wanted

Firefox 1.5.0.6 is very very crappy on OS X 10.4.7 -- lots of stalls, stutters, delays, lags .... AND worse: frequent dropped DSL broadband internet connections -- is it firefox or something else? I try to use mostly safari because on my system it's faster than firefox.

Quandary #1:

Whenever I post to blogger via firefox -- which I have to do because safari is not wysiwyg compatible with blogger/blogspot.com -- or vice versa -- my DSL ethernet connection simply drops out of sight for minutes at a time. All the network status lights go from green to red. Then some to yellow, back to red, and eventually in a few minutes back to green again. But if I re-post, connection drops again. After about 20 attempts, usually the damn thing will have made it onto blogger/blogspot

Is that my motherboard/ethernet connection? my configuration? or is firefox or is it the Zyxel 660R ADSL router modem or what? It always happens on firefox anytime I post an entry. And sometimes just during regular surfing on either browser but always with firefox posting on blogger/blogspot.

Any insights appreciated. You are requested to and more than welcome to leave comments/ideas and your link/site in the comments section and i'll be happy to give you/your blog credit and a link in an updated post if you help me solve this problem!

Much thanks and hoping some of you really smart brilliant thinkers who know this stuff out there can assist.

PS: Actually, there's a related quandary #2:

Is there any possibility that this is a problem or something related to an incoming hardwire PPPoE connection being translated/converted by the modem to a DHCP wireless connection .....something something something ... and then re-converted to a wired DHCP signal thus also contributing to the frequent dropped connections, stalls, lags, stutters that occur on both firefox and safari every day, many times a day, often many times per hour, and which occur when NOT posting to blogger/blogpot?

An apple tech person told me this was also frequently a cause of the stutters/lags and that I should not be using outdated DHCP ethernet software connection -- that it should be direct PPPoE -- and I of course have no idea what this means, especially as regards my situation.

He said to tell my ISP to give me a direct PPPoE hard wired connection not a translated/converted one. Is that correct? Ideas, suggestions, SOLUTIONS especially welcome.

Re: the accompanying image above: when it drops, it starts out with the Built-in Ethernet button going quickly from red to yellow to green, but it's so fast, I can never capture it at the very beginning of the dropped connection cycle. And as mentioned the others go from green to yellow to red in various phases before returning to green after the long wait and all the re-load attempts.