Update on Safari 'hang' problems
John Elton-Wall It seems to have been a router problem, but also compounded by an intermittent external problem with the Openreach provision, either line or exchange. Having not had any previous problems I had been very content not to be interested in router behaviours/intricacies once set up and working.
After lots of nausea with helplines (John Lewis and Apple – yes even our Macs/Apple software were suspected to the extent of contemplating a total reformat and install!) – the problem was solved by a senior John Lewis helpline staff member. Seemingly Netgear routers have an auto timeout facility and can be set to disconnect them from the modem. I was told that the factory set default for timeout is 'never' for the Netgear router John Lewis has been using; but ours was set to 5 minutes. Hence it was claimed help line staff would not be trained to look in that area of set-up.
I was a little taken aback by this response as in retrospect if the router disconnects from the modem (whilst showing healthy wi-fi status for itself and the Mac) and the modem continues to show a connection, it would seem that suspicion should fall on the router as well as the computer). Anyway I think JL will now be adding a step to their helpline fault finding routine. And thank goodness their helpline is free
The problem was masked for us by the fact that our two machines are often 'on' together so if one of us ceased online activity the other machine would presumably either wake up the router/maintain the connection.
Embarrassed but relieved at apparent solution!