@stephenw10 nevermind, unless someone can replicate this, I think I found the issue, and as much as I want to claim I still think its a bug, now I'm not so sure...seems that I was having sporatic connectivity, and that was leading it to ACT like it was not working, when it in fact was, just very very limited, and few and very far between in doing so....
so unless someone can replicate this, I do not think this is a bug anymore, or at least have enough doubt to not think its a bug still...not totally sure, but in any case I seem to have fixed the underlying problem I was having.
as for what port, yea, I'm aware, both cards, old and new, are intel IX driver based cards, both quad gigabit adapters, so I just had to change the interface everything was mapped to, but the prior issues led me to believe something else entirely was going on... but yea, same driver, I'm aware of that one, thank you! interface order did change, and I was trying to update things to the new interface, which had worked, up till I noticed my vpn issues...not sure what the bottom line issue was for that, but its fixed at least.