it happened again. i forgot to mention that this happens when there isn't any internet activity for several hours. when i tried going to a site like google or msn, it just hangs then goes to the default "page not found" screen on the browser.
this time i tried logging in to the router and it sat on that "checking network connection screen". i let it sit for about 3 minutes and then i got to the login screen. after i finally got to the login screen, everything was working normally.
i never had an issue like this with my old linksys wrt54g router.