Ggiabyte H110-DS3 (Bios v. 23a)
4GB ram (I don't want to load a windows OS)
USB 3.0 thumb drive

SMOS loads up seemingly fine except it can't connect to simplemining.net (counts 10 times all failing.) The lights on the ethernet port are blinking green (router is showing activity as well) but that's all I can see. 

I am at an absolutely loss as to what to do in this scenario.  Anyone have any ideas?