Tracking down connection issues

My internet connection had been a bit flaky for a couple of weeks, and about a week ago I lost it all together. I could see the network light on the Orange Livebox wasn't staying solid like it should, and the desktop PC wasn't managing to connect to the box (via wireless card), let alone the internet, so, long story short, Orange sent me a new router.

Set new router up, appropriate light came on and we're reconnected. Started setting up the wireless equipment to work with new router, and it seems we're not so connected after all. Desktop PC connected to the internet for a while then didn't. The PS3 tried to connect then failed to update. Finally today, got my laptop connected to the new router, and it seems to be ok-ish.

I started today by connecting laptop directly by ethernet cable to router and router directly to the socket inside the main phone socket. This seemed to work. Put phone socket together again and moved on to connecting laptop wirelessly to router (from inches away) with router connected to main phone socket.

Put router back where it normally lives (extension cable from main BT socket to the next room), plugged phone back in, and laptop still appears to be connecting wirelessly ok, but broadband speed test is now reporting 1.8mbps when it was reporting 2.5mbps previously. Is this because there is an extension lead now between phone socket and router? However, the desktop PC in the next room is only showing 0.8mbps on the broadband speed test. So is the line speed varying or does the wireless card/computer/location make a difference?

Since the internet connection problems started, I haven't had any new equipment in the house that could be causing interference, except a new PS3 to replace the previous one which died. Everything else is the same (including cordless phone) which caused no connection problems before.

I'm wondering if the wireless card in my desktop has a fault, and if there's anyway of testing it? I'm also wondering if there's any way of checking for wireless inteference between devices and the router? Even so, the Livebox clearly wasn't connecting to the internet before I replaced it, so is the problem more likely to be with my phone line? Or could it be that router and wireless card problems/interference just coincided?

Feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall, and really need to get the home network up and running again.

May be a mixture of things going on

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/frogstats.php shows how to get the stats from your livebox, i.e. connection speed, attenuation and noise margin.

Can you grab them when using things as they normally are, and also when using the socket inside the main phone socket. If there is a big difference (post them if not sure) then take a look at
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/faq/sections/radsl.htm...

Which covers how to possibly improve things, by removing the ring wire.

Once the broadband is known to be connecting good over Ethernet we can look at the wireless side of things

EDIT: sorry, didn't engage brain before posting first time. Looked up my stats both wireless with usual setup and via ethernet direct to internal phone socket. Attenuation is much the same but noise margin downstream is 6.1dB on usual setup as opposed to 9.8dB when connected directly. Just looking to see what this means in real terms...

Edited by deleted (Mon 13-Feb-12 15:07:15)

How and what is connected to router do not affect router stats. Router stats are measures of attributes of the connection between router and exchange.

Router stats should be taken from internal test socket AND from external faceplate socket immediately after making the connection. Post both sets (Speeds, NMs, Attenuations. Powers). Generally former will be no worse than latter cuz removing faceplate removes any extensions. Do you have any extension phone sockets?

Usually router and phone are plugged into an extension, because the main phone point is in a really bad place. Interestingly, there was no wiring from inside phone socket to the faceplate (like the picture in that link), so the socket in the faceplate must be directly wired to the connection that goes into the internal socket (hope I'm making sense). Anyway, the connection seems to be working now. It's almost as though removing/replacing the faceplate helped. Wireless connection to the desktop is still a little flaky though, so either PC problem or wireless card.

In reply to a post by MargeS:

.... because the main phone point is in a really bad place......

If ithat socket is an NT5 or similar and actually is the master, it's been illegally wired.

That'll be down to the BT man then, as he was the one that 'rewired' it last.