I have another laptop (A Dell Inspiron 3153) running Zorin 16.3. Normally, nothing is physically connected to it except for a power cable and headphones. with the occasional USB thumb drive attached for file transfers (so, no Dell dock).
Per Mr. Magoo's response, I tested this Dell D3100 Dock USB setup I have on the Dell running Zorin 16.3 and I can confirm the issue is present there as well.
Issue is NOT present in Zorin 15.3.
I do not have any monitors connected to the Dell D3100, so I do not need the DisplayLink driver from Dell. That said - just for the purpose of testing, I installed the driver on the Asus running Zorin 17:
https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=939cy
Not only did the drive not resolve the issue - it made it worse.
On restart - the computer was not responsive, no network connection at all. I walked away, came back after 2 minutes - network connection was present and the computer was now responsive.
Prior to the installation of this driver, the behavior was often: show the errors on startup>achieve a login window or desktop>computer was responsive, and either I would log in, or begin using the computer
Dell driver is getting uninstalled now.
That said - issue is still persisting.