It seems the broadband is suddenly working again now. Was down all yesterday and when I tried it earlier today. My ISP was very helpful and said they could see my connection was down when they looked and gave me the DSL login for the BT engineer test account to put into the router to test the connection, which was great service.

Fingers crossed it stays working now.

BTW, 56K was definitely very annoying... so sllloooowwwww. Although I'm not sure if all of the slowneess was just the connection, as it might have been the old P2 PC. I will try to relocate that PCI modem into a newer PC for future emergencies as it will make it much easier.