My new Network Extender 2 was stuck at Step 8a for hours and would not proceed, even though I registered 8 satellites. I found my Cisco/Linksys router had an option called IPSec Passthrough under VPN Options that was supposed to be enabled by default, but was not. I simply changed the option to Enable and saved the selection. Then the steps progressed and the unit was operational in less than a minute.
