> simple for a more experienced user then myself.
>
> Both the problems revolve around DHCP.
>
> Firstly, when using DHCP every setting is configured apart from the
> nameservers (IPv4 address, gateway, netmask & network address).  To the
> best of my knowledge I ran though the DHCP-HowTo correctly, I have tried
> also with an empty dhclient.conf file, no dhclient.conf file at all, a

looks like dhcp server just doesn't give required info.
i use dhclient too and it works fine