Thanks for all the replies. I did a reboot of the wifi router and my address changed from 192.168.0.5 down to 0.2. I checked the users and there appeared to be just one, me
The router address is 0.1, but I'm sure that my laptop's address has been this many times in the past or is my drug-addled rock star past catching up with me finally ?
I've not found anything that allows me to change the DHCP lease length, but none of you experts have explained to me why my laptop happily using said router is turfed off it's address unceremoniously when any other allowed device connects to the local network ? It doesn't make sense to me as the router could just as easily allocate another address to the newly joined device, or is that too simple ?
SHJ