I know it might be a daft question, as if you’re unable to connect to the internet you probably won’t be reading this, however, since yesterday afternoon, I’ve been unable to connect to the internet with Orange at home on our desktop or wirelessly on the laptop. The laptop will connect to the wireless router ‘locally’ but no internet. I’ve tried unplugging for a few minutes but still no joy.

I know in the past Orange broadband has gone down without warning for a few hours. I checked on the Orange website (I’m on the computer at work now) but the help and support link will not open up, making me more suspicious.

Rather than phoning an expensive helpline only to be told they’re having ‘technical difficulties’, I thought I’d see if any of you guys were up and running on Orange at the moment, or if we’re all grounded!

Yep, been mostly down for the past 24hrs. The helpline says they are aware of the problem. Helpfully they won’t give a time for fixing it!

Bet they won’t be in a hurry to refund you for lost time though, eh?!

Normal service has been resumed (for now!). At least now I can sort my fantasty league team, browse STW and peruse ebay over the weekend!

Broke for me too, but it was only their DNS servers, which (IME) have never been very good.

I’ve switched to using OpenDNS’s servers instead (you carry on using Orange’s broadband, it’s just a tweak to your PC’s networking setup). Works fine – if anything, quicker than Orange’s own DNS servers, even when they are working.

Instructions here

seconded openDNS, I’m with Orange and saw no down time recently, this must be the reason.