Appreciate the replies and thank you.

I'd still like to know about a couple of the points though.

The modem will give the dhcp LAN address 192.168.0.2 to the pc connected to it used for browsing the setup pages, and say its gateway is 192.168.0.1. When it is run on my line as described earlier and getting those addresses, the LAN side changes from 192.168 to the 172.16 and the gateway to the 81.146. as indicated on the PC's net conncection info. And given that it keeps the 192.168 and no strange addresses on my neighbour's line, should that indicate anything?

When I mentioned it settling on PPPOE/LLC as the adsl, that is incorrect in that the actual should be PPPOA/VCMUX.