After searching the web, it seems that there has been a modification made that means client.setTimeout() affects the waiting period of client.connect. However, my Arduino installation(1.82) doesn't seem to have this change. I've tried Sketch/include library/library manager/type/updateable to no avail, so I tried deleting the ESP8266WiFi library to see if I could then re-install it. So far I have only succeeded in screwing up several days of work. I would dearly love to know where I can find the latest version of the library, and whether or not it will actually include the fix for the 5 second timeout currently applied to client.connect.
Thanks in anticipation,
John