As it turns out, the computer that I tested it on had a reserved ip associated with its lan card. This ip had an old dns value instead of the newer ones. Knoppix works just fine now.
I have a home network with a Linux based DHCP and I have NT4 DHCP at the office. At home, the network connects fine to the local dhcp and finds the gateway, etc.... a no-brainer.
However at the office, It will connect to the local network but not accept the gateway settings from dhcp (NT4 dhcp is setup properly and has been used for years). I was fine when I manually typed in the ip info, but I found this quite strange.
As it turns out, the computer that I tested it on had a reserved ip associated with its lan card. This ip had an old dns value instead of the newer ones. Knoppix works just fine now.

Lenovo ThinkStation P520 Intel Xeon W-2123 3.6GHz 900W - NO RAM/ GPU/ HDD/ OS
$189.98
Intel Xeon E5-2697 V2 LGA2011 Server CPU Processor 2.7GHz 12 Core SR19H 130W
$35.00
Dell EMC PowerEdge R440 Xeon silver 4215 2.5GHz 16 GB ram 2x 550W PSU No HDD
$275.00
Dell Precision T5820 950W Workstation 4.00GHz W-2125 No RAM/ GPU/ HDD/ OS
$144.98
Intel Xeon E5-2699 V4 2.20GHz 55M 22-CORES LGA2011-3 Server Processor 145W SR2JS
$84.49
Intel Xeon W-2255 SRGV8 3.7GHz 10-Core LGA2066 Server CPU Processor
$199.99
Intel Xeon E5-2698 V4 20CORE 2.2GHz 50M Processor SR2JW *km
$38.99
Intel Xeon E5-2667V4 8-Core 3.20GHz SR2P5 CPU Processor *km
$17.99
Intel Xeon Processor E7-2890 V2 15-Core 2.80 GHz 37,5MB Cache FCLGA2011 SR1GV
$39.95
DELL Precision T3420 | Xeon 1240v6 | 525GB SSD |16GB RAM |Nvidia GPU |Win11
$149.00