Are hot days melting the Internetz?

Almost marching side by side with rising summer temperatures across Australia since late January - early February has been the strange behaviour of my Internet connection.

Now either (i) the heat is so severe that the Internetz are melting, (ii) I've suddenly developed the most wayward Internet connection, or (iii) some of the 6 ISPs identified as taking part in Conroy's ISP-level filtering trial (or a number of the other 10 small ISPs rumoured to be involved) are currently gearing up.

I telephoned Senator Conroy's Canberra office on Thursday 15 January and was told that the ISP applications of expression of interest were still being assessed and that the entire matter was behind a Chinese wall as it involved a commercial tender process and therefore was commercial-in-confidence.
I was further informed that the ISP-level filtering trial would not start for a couple of weeks at least.
This would of course take the staggered startup for the live trial right into the high volume of Net traffic as business entered its first full trading month for 2009.

Last Monday 9 February when I telephoned again I found the Senator's office was in a whimsical I don't THINK it's begun yet mood.

However, on Wednesday 11 February Senator Conroy finally announced that the trial was all go with six ISPs involved: Primus, Tech 2U, Webshield, OMNIconnect, Netforce and Highway 1.
Though he was careful not to give a start date for the trial. Here are Senator Conroy's weasel words in the media release.

So who do I believe here - the first staffer's very polite Sergeant Shultz defence, Conroy's sidestepping, or my suddenly erratic Internet connection?

Examples of the high number of Windows/Internet Explorer messages I have been seeing so far this past week:

The Requested Page Could Not Be Found

Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage

Proxy Error

The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server.
The proxy server could not handle the request *******************************.

Reason: Error reading from remote server

The webpage cannot be found

HTTP 404

Most likely causes:

There might be a typing error in the address.

If you clicked on a link, it may be out of date.

(Er, say again. It was the Google search engine I was trying to access)

403 Forbidden (WTF. It was an international news site)

403 Forbidden (For heaven's sake it was a picture of a beach, minus people!)

Server Error

The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request.
Please try again in 30 seconds.
Please see Google's Terms of Service posted at http://www.google.com/terms_of_service.html
(Oh dear, and all I was trying to do was read Still LIfe with Cat)

The web site you are accessing has experienced an unexpected error.
Please contact the website administrator.

Navigation to the webpage was canceled

Information Alert
Status : 504 Gateway Time-Out
Description : Unable to connect to origin web server. The web site you are attempting to access is currently unreachable. This may be due to a network outage, or the web site might be experiencing technical difficulties.

You are not permitted to browse this view (The Attorney-General's department has a hissy fit?)

And no, before anyone suggests it, my PCs don't appear to be infected with anything according to the checks I've run.