Well shack, this is when I have sympathy for those people on the end of a support line.

Idle googling suggests (and it's a guess) that you have a FreeBox HD set top box connecting you to the internet. Well, another guess is that this is a proprietory type solution. The manual is here and it's a PDF and in French. ftp://ftp.free.fr/pub/support/MANUEL...-BOITIER-A.pdf

Section 4.5.4 says you can mess with the ping but you need to login to the box.

Basically all I would suggest is connect via a cable and not WIFI. Reboot your box (how to do that is in the manual, in French) and reboot your PC. Lame eh? Then type

ipconfig /renew

in your DOS shell.

If that doesn't work then prepare to pay 34c per minute to speak to support line which I am sure is happier to speak in French than English.

Thanks slim-slag, why didn't I think of that (because you're stupid I hear from several ex-Service people on Pprune).

Having rebooted etc. there is a definite improvement--I still do not understand all the ping jazz, but there. I was much happier with my Netgear router but I have to use the Freebox to get my free telephone calls to most of the civilised world.

Thanks also to Blackace

Broadband question
 

My broadband speed has been very variable recently - it usually runs around 6Mb, but of late has been anywhere between 700k & 2.5Mb. Time of day doesn't seem to play much of a factor in it. If I moved to a different ISP, could the speed be more stable, or is it a function of the BT line in our village?

Have you considered using Skype? Free between computers and very cheap from your computer to anyones landline, ( you need to open an account). We use it all the time now as the quality is so good. Then you could go back to your Netgear router perhaps?