Minecraft - ever server saying 'Timed Out'

(Sorry for asking here but my dad doesn’t allow me to get a minecraft forums account because he thinks I am getting too many accounts for too many forums and I have already asked yahoo answers with no reply)

I know what ‘Timed Out’ means but I have checked everything:

  • not the computer, other games work fine
  • not the server im using, other servers have the problem
  • not the firewall (tried turning it completely off)
  • not the router (we don’t have any firewalls on that)
  • not the over-network usage (I have checked all computers and they use nothing, I have even checked my computer)
  • not ping, checked with command prompt:

Pinging us.lichcraft.com [192.99.44.13] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.99.44.13: bytes=32 time=277ms TTL=50
Reply from 192.99.44.13: bytes=32 time=277ms TTL=50
Reply from 192.99.44.13: bytes=32 time=278ms TTL=50
Reply from 192.99.44.13: bytes=32 time=277ms TTL=50

Ping statistics for 192.99.44.13:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 277ms, Maximum = 278ms, Average = 277ms

But the weird thing is that sometimes it works beautifully without any problems while other times it just goes down hill up to the point where as soon as i connect it times out soon after… But all the servers I have are synced… They will all be working fine then suddenly - bam! they are junk and I can’t even do anything but wait until it gets better again…

Has anybody experienced this before? And does anybody know how to fix it?

Thanks in advance…