Lick it, D-Link

I've been beside myself for months now. My connection to the office network from home has been severed for months now. My old Lynksys 8-Port router went down around that same time. I replaced it with the first hard wired router I was able to find, a 4-port from D-Link. Some people swear by them, others, not so much.

I was able to connect to the internet, but couldn't connect to my work machine. I got a million suggestions. I needed to open firewall gateways. I needed to work on my network settings. My TCP/IP setting were off. I had ghost settings from previous installs causing conflicts. Et cetera, ad nauseum.

Finally my friend Jeff suggested I speak to his brother, Bryan, as he sets these up for a living. I spoke with Bryan briefly yesterday afternoon and he got some notes together. Over the phone he stepped me through the steps to get the VPN working again. He came to the conclusion that it was the D-Link router that was creating a conflict with my office network and I needed to swap it out. I plugged in a backup 4-Port Linksys. Once I renewed the IPs on my machines I was able to connect to work immediately. If the D-Link allowed me to change the "third digit" of it's IP it would've worked, however they don't. So it's useless for me. Good for nothing D-Link.