"Colin Wilson" o.uk wrote
in message t...
Parents have crap ADSL. We reckon it's a combination of the wiring and
the
phones, based on testing by removing bits.

Plug the router directly into the test socket behind the faceplate,
and see if it magically becomes useful again - if it does, there's
definitely a problem on the internal wiring.

Exactly what we did - hence 'testing by removing bits'. We then went a bit
further, by trying the extension lines without any phones plugged in, hence
the comment about it being a combination of the wiring and the phones.

I discovered I had two master sockets set up in ours (one was
essentially bypassed, it was just sat on the circuit as an extension),
but it was enough to pull my connection speed down from 6Mbit to
3Mbit.

Would an ADSL faceplace help in that instance?

(remembering we're not necessarily in a position where such things can be
identified - I can remote control their computer, but not their eyes :-) )

cheers,
clive