Thanks Poe, I'll get to work on your suggestions.

I had already just arrived at the 'test from a neighbors connection' idea if only just to rule out the wire from the pole to my house. I am going to move my version of pingplotter onto a laptop so I can be a bit more mobile and perhaps leave it running in my neighbours houses.

What IP should I ping when doing this? If there is something physically wrong with the infra, I suppose the hop 2 issue should show regardless of what ISP IP it goes to?

I ran a test last night straight to a TalkTalk IP (one i have been assigned before (0-15). WHere this would usually be hop#2, it has become hop#3 and a mystery 2nd hop has emerged: https://share.pingplotter.com/E66EX8Ee6rp



I guess