Thanks Romulan and olektrolek for your help.The Eircom freebie modem is the ZyXEL model- and I have tried it vertically,horizontally, at a different phone socket,on all the various channels etc-but coverage is still poor. It was for this reason that I purchased the Netgear N600- now im wondering- as I am unable to set it up, to take this modem back to Currys and perhaps try one of those signal boosters that plug in to the electrical socket in the room where I am trying to increase the signal quality?