FTP woes
In general, Brad and I have a great ISP. When we've had problems, they've been good about getting things taken care of for us.
Except for one thing.
FTP.
The problem is that whenever I try to upload or download more than a handful of files (literally 3-5), the connection craps out. Almost always. To almost any host. So they did an experiment with us. They lent us a static IP. When we had it, we were able to FTP without any problems. They took it back away, and the problems came back.
Apparently that was not conclusive enough for them to issue us a static IP free of charge. Somehow it's still a problem on our side.
Ok, well... I've been bugging people to help me when I have to upload stuff (MT upgrades, smiles, etc etc etc).
I wrote an email to them over the weekend asking if we could work something out with their pricing on a static IP ($15/mo, $50 set up, $300 refundable deposit in case of naughtiness done with a static IP).
They've offered that I can send in $150 deposit. So I'm going to sign up for a static IP. I'm frustrated that they won't work with me more, but at least this is a consession on their part.
FTP, here I come! 
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What is their dhcp lease set to, 30 seconds? LOL I wonder if their dhcp address are being nat'ed which might change how they behave over a static. The only other thing I can think of is, does it take a while to log into some hosts? If it does then it might be a reverse dns lookup problem on their server. But usually if thats the case you wont be able to connect at all.
Whoo hoo! Congratulations on the power to FTP!
wow - it cost me £10 for a lifetime subscription for a static ip....unfortunately I don't use that isp anymore. Demon in the uk give everyone of their subscribers a static ip foc but over isps wouldn't even know what a static ip is! Is there any way you could change isp's?
The problem isn't a DHCP problem. The problem is that, when you don't have a static IP address, they put you behind a NAT that they run. This NAT randomly eats characters from the FTP command channel, thus causing the failures. It never drops characters anywhere else, just on the FTP command channel.
When we had a static IP address (and were thus no longer "behind" their NAT), the problem disappeared. To me, that's a pretty damning indictment. They claim "nobody else" has the problem, which is understandable, given how few people use FTP is batch mode. 99.99999% of "FTP users" will use it to download a single file, and on a rare occasion when it eats a character during their connection, they'll just think it was some kind of Internet hiccup and just try again (and succeed).
We are using this ISP because we have no choice. We cannot get DSL, we cannot get cable modem, and we hate dialup. It's either this or 56k.
Do you experience the same problem using SCP? I don't know if your server has SSH enabled, but I know that I frequently can use SCP to transfer files when FTP doesn't work. Usually has something to do with the passive mode that FTP uses to do file transfer. There's really good windows SCP client out there, I can dig up a link if you like.
I hit post too quickly.
The reason I ask, is because A) I'd love to save you money, and B) SSH is encrypted so your password would be safer anyway.
Either way, glad you can transfer files now.
We just got the static address today, and as expected, everything was just happy as a clam. *shrug* Stupid ISP...