- but seriously, if you have problems with the internet conection not working, and especially if you use a router, one thing to try is to switch the router off for 15 minutes or perhaps an hour. This will clearly signal to the other end that you have gone away and your connection will be reset waiting for you to power it on again. Routers are small computers in their own right and a reboot or cooling down period can solve many issues.

Microfilters keep the broadband signal out of the telephones, and interference from the telephones out of the broadband signal. Every telephone, fax, alarm, sky box, dialler, caller display unit, credit card machine, 56k modem - in fact anything at all that is connected to a broadband phone line other than the modem or router needs to be fed through a filter. If you don't do this your phones will hiss and your broadband will be slow or break completely.

The connection to your broadband modem or router must only pass through the smaller unfiltered socket of a microfilter, so think through your wiring and check that there is a clear path from the incoming BT line to the modem or router. You don't actually need a microfilter for the modem / router if you have a suitable BT to RJ11 cable or US/UK adaptor to hand.

Read our MaxDSL diagnostics page if you have a variable speed "up to 8M" connection from BT, or a faster one from the likes of Be, Bulldog or Sky. You may want to disconnect your ring wire if you have a lot of extension wiring and either don't have an NTE5 master socket or can't put the modem / router next to the master socket.

If you have read and done all that lot you may have fixed it. If you didn't understand or didn't feel up to ripping your sockets apart then get in touch. For £50 we will come to locations in the area around Grantham, Stamford and Peterborough and have a look at it for you. This charge includes the first half hour, after that we charge £30 per hour. Parts or equipment we supply are extra costs but we will ask you before fitting them, this is usally less than £20 for telephone wiring modifications.