Late last night I got a phonecall from my girlfriend complaining (surprise surprise!) about the internet not working. I went over to discover a ‘Belkin N Wireless ADSL Modem-Router’ with a flashing internet icon blinking orange.

After a while, searching for the solution on my iPhone, I decided to flush the IP using CMD. To do this, I opened CMD with administrator privileges, and entered the following:

> ipconfig /all
> [results returned]
> ipconfig /release
> [action completed]
> ipconfig /renew
> [action completed]

However, this didn’t work. After that, and a few other tests (changed the PPPoA to Dynamic/Static, changed subnet masks and updated firmware etc) I decided to restore the router to factory settings. SAME PROBLEM! The flashing orange icon continued to annoyingly wink at me.

This led me to believe that it was an issue before the router/modem, and an issue with the ISP. I rang them (excellent support team – Virgin Media!) and told them the issue. Although they couldn’t tell me why it had occurred in the first place, they did inform me that restoring the ADSL modem would require me to re-enter the PPPoA username and password, which he gave me.

Hay presto! It worked!

The orange blinking internet light was because the connection to the exchange servers were active, but not connected. This could be told as the ADSL light was a solid blue (showing a connection) but not logged in (orange blinking internet light!)