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> by modem (this was 2008, not 1998)

I'm mildly amused you consider modems obsolete.

Here in the OT world and where systems need to be air gaped [1], modems are absolutely used to provide separated, secured links and non-IP links. They are not going away any time soon.

[1] Example, the dial-up time servers provided by the NPL for offline systems https://www.npl.co.uk/getattachment/products-and-services/Ti...

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I should have clarified -- the modem was really obsolete for the purposes it was being used.

The carrier involved was one that everyone has heard of. All of our other carrier billing was handled using a variety of authenticated links/services to the carrier. And this particular carrier had other, better, ways of doing it, too. For whatever reason, we had never altered that process. It was permanently fixed a few months after we got that host working again.

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