In article ,
"michael adams" writes:
The lesson of this tale is if you lose your internet
connection* and the phone say in the living room is no longer
working the first thing you should do is check the master
socket - anyway the one in the hall usually by plugging the
phone directly into that and seeing if its live.

In fact it was "terminally intermittent" it came on for
ten seconds and then was lost again.

If its live, what you *shouldn't* do next is try and
trace miles of cabling which has been there for maybe 20
or more years which goes all over the house behind furniture
etc. moving piles of stuff which have accumulated in the
interim in the process. And then let despair place its icy
hand on your shoulder as you contemplate having to trace the
fault somewhere Somehow. Days, weeks, months ?

In fact the next thing you should have done was check
the ADSL filter which was plugged into the master
socket by plugging the phone into that and see if
the phone is still live.

Whoops !

So those piles of spares that have sat in the draw have
finally found a use.

It would appear a faulty* ADSL filter on the master socket can
knock out everything at a stroke. Including the "unofficial
extensions" ran off it maybe 30 years ago

Obvious really in retrospect. Five minutes Googling would
probably have sorted it all out.

Considering how simple they are, I'd have to say I've come
across far more ADSL filter failures than I would have
expected.

Many people nowadays no longer have a phone plugged in at
all. In this case you can remove the filter completely and
plug the ADSL modem straight into the line (will probably
need a different lead or adapter). You might get better
ADSL speed. The filter is only required if you also have
phone handsets connected.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]