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.

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