Too many TCP established connections

[stevenrw]

A buddy of mine has asked me to help him sort out problems with his Sky Broadband. First, does anybody know if they run ADSL2 or ADSL2+? (It will come as no surprise that the script reader from Sky did not know...which speaks volumes)
Anyway, in the course of our investigations, running Netstat threw up loads of "Established" connections. They jumped on this saying that these were all competing for the signal, which kinda made sense, but they couldn't advise how to kill these.
There were also quite a few in a wait_state.
Can any of you boffins please explain what this is all about and how to do a thorough housekeeping exercise and get rid of these.

[pctech]

AFAIK they run ADSL2+ where the customer is connected to their own equipment.

Netstat shows all TCP/IP activity in the system, both internal loopback and external connections

Any references to the PC's name (or 127.0.0.1) under foreign address are loopback connections and won't affect his connection at all.

Those in Time_wait are waiting for a response from the internal or external component they have called and will close after a certain time has passed.

There's no way to kill them other than closing applications.