I have been working out of the house for years for a large corporation and have had no prior problems connecting to our virtual private network (VPN). However, my cable Internet provider recently forced me to close my residential account and open a separate business account to use a VPN. We have tried using two different modems: one with a static IP and the other with a dynamic IP. When I connect either of these directly to my laptop, I can get into the VPN, but when I go through a Linksys router, the VPN does not work. Any suggestions? Without knowing the make and model of your router and VPN, I can only guess -- but I can make a pretty good guess, based on your symptoms. Since your VPN tunnel works when directly connected through the modem, the problem is not the modem or its IP address. The problem must be introduced by the router -- most likely, by creating an IP address conflict, blocking a VPN protocol, or corrupting VPN packets using Network Address Translation (NAT).