Well, while this may be the case, I'm not quite sure how Apple device assuming same IP as before somehow triggers the disconnect from the rest. It may be part o

Well, while this may be the case, I'm not quite sure how Apple device assuming same IP as before somehow triggers the disconnect from the rest. It may be part of the steps required to reproduce, but hundreds of other consumer routers with standard configuration handle such a scenario without booting the rest of the attached clients, which is why I woudl rephrase it as unexpected behavior from the router. And Apple isn't taking a shortcut or a hack here, it's a known scheme: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4436.txt http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4436.txt It's not so much doing anything special as crafting a special call to the network it tries to connect to. It's more of a shortcut to know if the Mac should go to the DHCP phase rather than cheating its way on to the network.