Limit the number of simultaneous connections on the bittorrent clients ?
Virgin apparently have application management so prioritize different applications for traffic access (http://www.virgin.net/allyours/faqs/trafficManagementFAQ.html) but then since games are the highest this doesn't explain the drop outs.
I seem to remember that earlier models of netgear routers had problems with excessive numbers of connections causing them to keel over.
What model of netgear router is it ?