This is a geek success story from an adhoc network administrator who sludges through the internet for solutions to compensate for a lack of education, ie me. Perhaps this will help others like me looking for a similar solution after Google indexes this page.

Last week one of my people couldn't get out to the internet, though he could see the entire local network. The server (win2000) is set up to use DHCP and automatically assigns the IP adress, DNS numbers and Default Gateway to each client machine. On inspecting the machine with IPCONFIG /all at the command line, the computer successfully renewed its lease, had obtained a valid IP adress, and was using the correct DNS numbers, but the default gateway was blank.

I scoured the internet trying to figure out why the DHCP server wasn't serving the gateway address. There was nothing out there that I could find. I got into the DHCP settings on the server and couldn't find anywhere to set the default gateway within the active scope. After much frustration I gave up and manually configured the computer to use the settings and not pull from DHCP. Then this morning 2 more computers couldn't get the default gateway. I quickly manually configured those computers as well, and went in search for a solution again.

The solution came as a bit of a surprise afer sludging through many technical websites. The reason I couldn't find the settings for Default Gateway in the DHCP configuration is because its not called that at all. Its called 003 Router (which was suspiciously missing from the configured items). Once I entered the address of the gateway under router, everything worked as it once had. Success.

One mystery that I can't account for, is why wasn't the missing '003 router' key a factor in the other 18 machines running on the network. They all renewed their leases at log in and all kept their old gateway information. Why did those few computers not keep the old settings like the others had?

Also what happened to the '003 router' key that must have been there before the problems? I'm guessing this somehow got deleted the week before when we were tracking down a DNS problem that turned out to be a problem higher up the data stream at the ISP level. It must have been deleted while troubleshooting the DNS numbers the week before, but I don't remember deleting it.

Now for the dark cloud to my silver lining. Had Microsoft used a consistant name for the default gateway in the DHCP options, I could have saved hours of frustration. Instead they used the generic name "router" which doesn't describe my setup at all. I do have a router but it doesn't serve as a gateway. The name is confusing, Miscrsoft really should know better.

Steve G.