Brand new computer, but flashes of poor internet connection

[splashpot]

Just bought a brand new Dell 6000. I bought a seperate hard drive though and installed it myself. Therefore I erased Windows and all the standard drivers/settings. I'm pretty sure I loaded most of the necessary drivers back onto it, but I get these flashes of about 1 minute where I can't connect to any website. I don't know if this has anything to do with some of the settings being off or not. Do I have to open some ports or something? I don't really know too much about that. I am on wireless, but this still shouldn't be happening. Anyone know how I can improve my connection?