The modem is out of the box so it may be faulty. Also I wish I could say I had thought about the 255 etc issue and worked it out but I'm a bit thick about these things (learning fast mind you!!)

Checking ifconfig I have ppp_0_0_38_1 with the IP address handed down from BT and the default gateway listed as the P-t-P. There is eth0 which doesnt appear to be active and then br0 which is the LAN port based on the IP addy.

A quick look through route on the modem show online 1 line being 192.168.1.0 with it saying:-
Destination 192.168.1.0 Gateway * Genmask 255.255.255.0. Am I missing something here? WOuld there be some form of route for the external side or gateway or something?

so the WAN side is working and traceable from outside.

Did you do the nslookup from your client PC ?

does the hub work normally ?

It would seem so. But on the other hand now I've disconnected it - its been out for a few minutes - and traced it again from another PC and its still showing the same results. So I can't actually be sure that the trace is back to my own connection.

I tried nslookup on the connected machine adn got rubbish. Unfortunately the modem itself doesnt come with nslookup on it. But if I ping say 8.8.8.8 network is unreachable.