Solaris

What type of communication does Solaris 10/09 need to do with it's default gateway before it can boot up?

Depends - none if no networking setup. You have not told us enough about the system network configuration to tell you whether access to a gateway is required.

I don't see why it should have any communication. Unless, if its network boot.

Even then it shouldn't need gateway if network install is from local LAN subnet, I think.

We have had a Solaris workstation on a highly controlled (ACL) subnet. Devices are not even allowed to ping the router. With our prevous version of Solaris this was no big deal the system would boot up just fine. Now that Solaris 10/09 has been loaded the system won't even boot and according to the sys admin its because the server can't talk to the router. Should I believe him?

No. Booting Solaris has nothing to do with networking. Do you see any error messages on the server's console while attempting to boot it up?

Are you on a SPARC or Intel platform?

Exactly, what error message are you getting?

Here's from the sys admin:
The server stops in maintenance mode and the CDE login screen does not come up. I didn't write it down, but it's something like:

svc:/network/physical:default transition to maintenance

says to login and use svcs -xv for details