Incidents
Enough bad things have happened and been forgotten. It's time to write things down.
November 21, 2023 - My ISP, Bell, remotely updates my modem
An ingenious update from Bell whose seemingly only intended change was to introduce a permanent banner nagging me to install their "WiFi app" also wiped out all my port forwarding configuration as well as somehow made whichever device was assigned the local IP address I use for the server unable to access the internet. Once I figured out what had happened, it was only a matter of resetting the modem and re-applying all the necessary settings (which I have written down elsewhere) to restore service. Thanks, Bell :)
I only thought to investigate the local-IP-address-no-internet thing after reading a very thorough post from an Ubuntu forum member:
Edit - Solved!: I managed to get the internet working again after I manually changed the ip address on my laptop. I don't know why that worked but it did.
— pi-pie
You said it, pi-pie. This is probably the most upsetting thing to me about this whole situation: I do not and likely will not ever understand exactly why this happened.