Quote Originally Posted by drekidd
So.. it seems it could be the DHCP of my Router versus my corporate switch on Linux (works in Windows remember!)..
You're right, it could well be your router conflicting with how Linix expects DHCP to work. Now that you say this I recall that over a year ago I tried a real hunk of junk Belkin wireless router on my network. It never could DHCP properly with Knoppix on my notebook (not sure if I even tried it with the desktop), although the same computer works fine with windows. I could make it work by manually setting the IP and related stuff. The router had other problems and they were so serious I had to stop using it. They never did issue a firmware fix for it; Belkin replaced the hardware with v2 hardware and started upgrading the firmware for that, but left all of us v1 hardware users abandoned with defective stuff.

Three guesses if I or my friends will ever buy Belkin routers again.

So anyway, you very well may find that your router doesn't quite work for DHCP with all system (was likely tested only under windows and doesn't exactly confirm with the DHCP spec). There is precident for this.

If it's any comfort, I've also tried Linksys, SMC, Netgear, Nextlan, and Dlink routers, and the models I've tried have all worked fine with Knoppix.