Grrr.
I couldn't sleep last night, so I thought I'd have a cup of tea and a quick browse (at 4AM). No internet. Lights were on, but nobody home. Ah well, must be down for maintenance, I thought.
So I got up this morning and tried again - still nothing. Oh well.
I got home just earlier - tried again. Nothing. Cue all the usual crap with shutting down the router, ping tests, all that malarkey. Nothing. It seems all is well at my end (I have a DSL connection), but there's no connection to the ISP. Great.
A call to the service status line revealed nothing (as always <!--emo&:rolleyes:--><img src='
http://i2.ifrm.com/html/emoticons/rolleyes.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='rolleyes.gif' /><!--endemo--> ), so I took a deep breath and called the ISP helpline.
The nice Indian chap asked me all the usual questions (is the router plugged in, what lights are on, etc), and then got to the bit I hate - the one that makes you feel like a total n00b:
"Click on the start button, click on 'run', and then type 'i', 'e', 'x', 'p', 'l'....."
In other words, go to your routers' connect page. Which I'd been to about 20 times already. <!--emo&<_<--><img src='
http://i2.ifrm.com/html/emoticons/dry.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='dry.gif' /><!--endemo-->
So as instructed, I click on the 'connect' button (which I'd done countless times already), and guess what?
[quote=""router connection page""]Your broadband line is connected.[/quote]
<!--emo&:rant:--><img src='
http://i2.ifrm.com/4013/140/emo/angry1.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='angry1.gif' /><!--endemo-->
I swear the guy just clicked a button at his end that he didn't want me to know about - I hadn't done anything different, yet all of a sudden it just worked. I was all set up for a good rant, but ended up finishing with 'Oh, I guess it's working now. OK, thanks!'
Oh well, at least I have t'internets back.