After a firmware upgrade, started experiencing brief disconnects while online gaming that I had never experienced before.  My ISP had also sent out an email asking me to reset my router in order to take advantage of some higher bandwidth.  My ISP is Cox Communications.  I went back to a prior firmware and still in the same situation.

I've tried running a continuous ping command from two wired PCs while gaming and started seeing a rough pattern of about 15-20 minute intervals where the ping replies would timeout for a few seconds and sputter back to solid replies after about 10-12 seconds.  I also tried pinging Google's IP on one PC and Cloudflare's on the other.  The same pattern continued on each PC running the continuous ping command.

I have not tried a direct connection to my modem yet, but suspect it would work fine.  Just a little reluctant to try that before exhausting other tests.  There is also an older Netgear switch that the two PCs go through before the AX50.

Could someone offer a little hand-holding on what to try next?  If there is anything else I can provide, let me know.