Some dismayed investigation later determined that the issue was that our ninja cats had successfully bypassed the protective cover I'd devised for our router, and cat pee had dribbled into the actual router and fried at least one component.
Of course, while this is going on I get paged for a modestly significant VMWare outage for work, in which about a dozen virtual servers were effected; and before all this happened my lovely spouse got a call that her church's regular piano player was sick, and could she come and play; so I had all the kids and planned to take them to church with me; but one of the cars wouldn't start in the cold due to an old battery; and, well, you get the picture.
Yah, it was a pretty cruddy Sunday.
So, after getting back from fixing the issues at work later that night, and thoroughly but carefully cleaning the router's circuit board (with clean water, a old, soft toothbrush, just a tad of gentle, unscented dish soap, and more clean water), and drying it, I examined the board closely under a magnifying glass. I soon found this chip, which I had cleaned quite a bit of crud off of, with several of it's leads burned through:
 |  | |
| New chip - top view | New chip - bottom view |
I went back downstairs, plugged it in, and to my great joy, it worked!
Total cost, about $25.
I'd not at all mind doing a similar job again, the only thing I'd prefer to do differently is to have a better lighting and magnifying setup. Perhaps a large, stand mounted, self lit magnifying glass, or maybe some good work lights and one of those jeweler's loupes which can attach to a pair of glasses.
Anyway, all told, success! Much money saved, a yet more cat proof DSL router providing me service as I type this post, and a happy Pat. :-)
