Belkin and Netgear setup problems on O2

Aaargh, how can I get a reliable network at home?

I'm trying to connect up 2 Macs (Air and MacBook), an iPad, iPhone and a Wii (no, I'm not rich, all but the Wii comes from the company I work for).

I'm on O2, and needed to upgrade the standard box when this failed - happy to take advantage of better range offered by N routers.

First I tried the Netgear DGN 2000 - which worked fine, except that every morning and sometimes during the day, the router needed to be restarted as browsers were unable to load pages. Interestingly Skype continued to function fine. Also the browser was not complaining it was not connected to the internet, it just wouldn't load the page. Renewing the DHCP lease had no effect. The only action that corrects the problem is to restart the router.

Netgear support has not shed any light on this problem. I am on the latest version of firmware.

I followed O2's advice on how to configure the router. The setup followed this page to the letter:
http://service.o2.co.uk/IQ/SRVS/CGI-BIN/WEBCGI.EXE?N...

I conduct numerous webinars, and couldn't really have them fail in mid-session through any kind of internet interruption, so I decided to try a Belkin Surf. The setup is not so easy to follow as on the Netgear. Belkin themselves suggested I try PPoA, but since I had no username and password they couldn't help me. They were also suggesting I use VC-MUX multiplexing, with a VCI value of 38. Obviously this didn't work...

The first O2 person gave me a username to try that didn't work.

The second O2 person gave me a username and password I definitely don't have. He also suggested I use dynamic/fixed IP 1483 bridge to access the account (which doesn't require a username or password), and set the VPI/VCI values to 0/101. This got me connected to the internet, but ever since the connection has been unreliable, with different machines taking anything up to 20 minutes to get access.

Currently I'm back on the Netgear box.

So:
1. Can anyone shed light on why my Macs on the Netgear box at least daily fail to load web pages?

2. Does anyone have any idea how to get the Belkin router working more reliably?

3. One other thread on this site refers to waiting some 30 minutes or so with no internet connection when switching routers. I haven't done this. Could this be part of the problem?

You need to wait 20 mins or so if you swap routers on O2 unless you clone the mac address of the O2 box onto the replacement router.

O2 would have sent you a replacement router if yours has gone faulty.

The setup is as shown on the O2 help page.

Not sure why the mac's can't open web pages but might be worth trying alternative DNS servers like open DNS or Google.

Do the MAC's have a valid IP address, gateway and DNS when things aren't working, and can they see the netgears configuration pages

Sorry for the slow reply, but I haven't had a failure in the last couple of days. I'm guessing the reason for the "fix" is that I still have the Belkin router up and running, albeit not connected to the ADSL line. When I open the Mac each morning, it's automatically connecting to the Belkin network, and I simply reconnect to the Netgear network - different from only having one box! I guess I'll have to down the Belkin at some point, to test this, but I'm reluctant to try this while nothing is really wrong...

Also currently my wife's away, so only one Mac is accessing the network.

I'll update this if anything new occurs.