Well, the issues with my ADSL line are getting worse: it seems to loose DSL sync randomly and no combination of phone sockets or microfilters appears to help. This means that email may be delayed by two days or more (although I do now have backup MX thanks to GratisDNS), and the web site(s) will not always be available 
Still, the good news is that it’s so nice to have an ISP that isn’t run into the ground by PHB’s: yesterday I called support (for the first time) and was rather worried by the ‘Press 1 if you are using a Mac’ voice menu, but I didn’t need to worry:
Support: Hello. How can I help you ?
Me: I’ve got a problem with my router. It doesn’t pass the ATM loopback test
Support: Which model do you have ?
Me: A Zyxel 650
Support: Ok, I can test the line, but it’ll take two minutes or so
And they did ! The line passed, so they wanted to go through some testing with me that involved a router factory reset, but I said it was going to take a little time as I was set up for static IP’s, so without any discussions he helpfully went though all the steps I needed to take in order for them to be able to raise a fault with BT, including telling me which socket and connector BT would be using to prove/disprove any fault reports so I could do it in my own time.
As it turns out, I couldn’t get it back even after all of the extra steps, but had to go out before I could report anything – on the way back there was a BT Openreach van parked next to my green box, so I tried again when I got back in, and it started working again. About 11pm last night it vanished again, and was brought back this morning by a router power cycle although the software reset option appears to have no effect now. Assuming it’s not an engineer induced fault (boy, do I have a list of those from numerous BT installs over the years at work) then it’s looking likely that the router is dying: if this is the case then I’d expect this random availability to continue for the next week or more.
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