Poor Tech Support
This is not a question. Instead it's a solution!! Not a solution obtained from tech support however. Because they were useless. I spent more than 2 hours working with tech support to solve a connectivity issue. Specifically, a connection to my work VPN. First know that Cox does not support VPN connection unless you pay them $10/per month. In the current COVID-19 climate, their lack of "in this all together" support (a quote from one of the least helpful tech support persons - Michael I have ever encountered) is simply irresponsible. It's not as if I or others in my house are having to stay home by choice. I would actually call them sales people rather than tech support since all they tried to do is sell me more service. I explained to them that everyone else in my company can connect to the VPN. I worked with my network administrator to resolve the issue. After several changes and trials, we determined it was an issue with Cox. I was able to access the VPN from a hotspot on my phone. Others in my household can connect to their work VPN's through Cox with out difficulty. I would have thought that these facts illustrated that some setting on the router or on their end was blocking the connection. Nope, all I was told that they could send a technician to me for a cost of $75 or enroll in the service plan for $10/month. And that the purpose of sending a technician to the house was to resolve a signal strength issue. Now, I'm not a wizbang Cox technician, but I'm pretty sure signal strength is unrelated to my issue.
The solution, after reading through pages of posts on this site, was to simply turn off the Advanced Security Features and to set port forwarding. That's it. No on-site technician required. No extra service plan required. Just a simple setting that should have been covered under the standard tech support knowledge base. I hope this helps others who may be experiencing the same issue from a technical side as well as a technical support side or actually a lack of technical support.
TLDR - if VPN is not working try disabling the Advance Security features.
