After more laps through the troubleshooting steps than I care to remember*, I finally talked to an actual tech person at about 5 p.m. my time. She's the one who figured out what was actually wrong, and didn't want to try to explain it to the support manager well enough for him to explain to me, so she called me herself.

My old configuration was deleted from the front-end systems. This sends a "deactivate" code to the switch, just in case someone decides to reactivate. I was on SBC before they were acquired, so my username was @sbcglobal.net. The new system required me to have an @att username.

The switch said the username didn't match, but my address (IP? MAC?) was still assigned. The front-end systems didn't have any way to send a command to clear the sbcglobal address from the configuration, so someone had to fix it directly on the switch.

Some of the above is reading between the lines of what she said. She was talking to me like I was Aunt Tilly, but I got what she meant.


* I eventually started calls by saying, "I've already power-cycled the modem and the computer. I've reset the modem. I've used both support username/password combos on the modem. I've unplugged and replugged everything."