It just dawned on me (as I hit my forehead soundly) why I was having trouble getting the router field specified on my clients. I had setup a machines list (in netinfo) to assign specific IP numbers to certain computers and had them in the range 10.0.1.2-32. I also had DHCP set to assign IP numbers in the range 10.0.1.100-128 for other machines which I did not care which IP they got. The problem was the machines in the lower range would get an IP number from the DHCP server but the router field would be empty.
Could not use it like that so I went back to the old setting until it hit me today, and I set the DHCP server range to cover both ranges and viola! It now works properly.
Evidently, the DHCP server only publishes the router field for machines in its serving range and if a specific machine record exists it only passes back the IP number. Wondering if the machines record needs additional fields or something. Will check it out with my Apple pals next week.