Intermittent drops, and slow!

I've been experiencing intermittent drops which lasts anywhere from a few minutes to several minutes.  Most of the time it comes back on by itself but sometimes I need to manually reset the modem.  I'm also experiencing  slow speeds, some webpages take awhile to load.  It's very frustrating to have this happen over and over again and at the most inopportune times at that.  I'm reluctant to condemn my modem and/or my router because if I go out and buy new ones and the problem persists then nothing's been solved.  This is a problem that has plagued me ever since I signed up for internet service.