Warning: May contain hardcore geek content

Debugging your brothers Windows connection problems over a flaky Skype connection while suffering a hangover from the previous nights drinking is not was I was planning on doing today. However at least its a pretty static and doesn't involve moving around in this humid warmth.

My brother couldn't connect to my website or ssh in. Everything just kept failing with unspecified network failures. I ran through the basics, he could ping me. I could see my site from work's network. My parents and w3c could also see the site. It only occurred to me after a few hours that both me and my brother both access the 'net through NTL. Maybe the problem was NTL to NTL?

I had a quick google around for the NTL proxy servers (the explicit ones, not the transparent proxies). As soon as I had loaded up my homepage via a proxy Jason let me know everything started working. I don't know why it un-wedged the network, but it did.