Thanks again for these quick replies.

This Internet Cafe is in Khartoum Sudan. I used to connect using this laptop with Breezy Badger Ubuntu. It definitely uses static ip's.

I foolishly tried to dist-upgrade to Dapper Drake and it buggered everything up. But at least I can get my music on a separate partition using knoppix.

I am surprised this is proving so difficult.

Actually these local guys are pretty good. It is a pity though that the BSD guy is away at the moment. Or I would be on already.

I am going to try again in knoppix