verizon california and DHCP leases

[Skunk Worx]

I saw the strangest thing (to me, anyway) on my verizon DSL account.

It seems to assign a single DHCP IP address to a mac address, then holds 
it across reboots, shutdowns, etc.

While the lease is "not released", no other machine is recognized. All 
DHCP request packets are silently ignored.

A modem reset would not clear it.

Attempting to use another mac address to get a lease (swapping out a 
machine) just gets ignored requests...no response at all.

But if I plug my Mac Mini in, it gets the address right away. Every time.

The Mac has a ipconfig release command and it actually works...just 
change the proto from DHCP to BOOTP...after releasing the address from 
the Mac, I could connect a FC4-F7 back into the modem and get an IP 
right away.

I suppose the Mac had the lease all along and finding the release 
command opened up the modem for another mac address? Nor sure what was 
happening. Seems ok now.

I see a lot of people complaining on the web about not being able to get 
IP addresses for their routers from cable modems, DSL modems, etc...I 
wonder how widespread this issue is.

---
John