There's just over one week left to the big day and no doubt some of our readers will be putting up their Christmas trees and lights. However it's worth remembering that some types of tree lighting can interfere with your ISPs ADSL broadband connection, which may sometimes cause a loss of connection.

Naturally such lights should be kept at a distance from your broadband router; though ADSL can be quite sensitive and even that may not be enough. So if you're noticing any unusual connection problems since the lights went up then turn them off for awhile and see if the issues reoccur.

One old trick from Nildram (Tiscali) for detecting the interference is to turn an analogue radio to Medium Wave 693 down to 612, which should produce a lot of buzzing when in the vicinity of faulty equipment. Typically you may have more than one source of interference, though this method will not detect them all.