fwiw I had similar problems once with dsl when it rained so was pretty obvious it was the phone wire drop. Convincing Internet support was useless they wanted all the 'do this and that pia stuff - I had to call for phone service while it was raining & tell them when it Rains I have noise on my phone line & it is screwing up my internet. They sent a service guy & changed the pole to house drop line. Said he would put in some report to bury it & that someday they would magically do that.

Genes, no, I don't use hibernation or sleep or stand by. Let me run this thought through y'all. About the time the computer decided it didn't want to do internet, we had Comcast to come out to check why we got nothing but tiles. While he was here, he took note that we have five TV's and was using several splitters. He unhooked/uninstalled one of the tvs and it got rid of the tiles. Could the splitters have anything to do with this problem? What is such a riddle to me is, why does one computer work on the Ethernet and the other one will not? Hmmmmmm? I've had another AT&T technician back to the house and he found nothing and I took it back to the computer guy and they, again, found nothing. The AT&T guy did suggest hooking up a router and using that. What's the general thought on that idea?

It's the phone company, a human always answers the phone (when you get to the end of the automated directory tree that all companies have). I've always had excellent tech support response from ATT and its predecessor Pac Bell for terrestrial service. The few times I've needed a technician to come out, I don't think the phone-in call took more than a few minutes. They first run automated diagnostics and failing any useful info from that, they immediately tell you what time slots are open in their schedule. As with any tech support call on any matter, to save yourself time, you need to quickly assess whether the person on the call is the proverbial school nurse, or instead someone who has the knowledge to address the issue. BS is BS, no matter what the subject matter. Maybe the service isn't so hot in other parts of the country.

Kubuntu still? "My computer woke up this morning and decided to not go to work." You don't mean "woke up" from a "Suspend" do you? If so, I'd do a restart. If that didn't work, I'd do a shut down. . I rarely use VPN. The only one I've set one up was set up by following the instructions posted on my VPN providers website. Settings that worked last night should work this morning but... perhaps you had an update that didn't go quite right? (Just thinking/guessing out loud, I don't really know.) If it were me, I'd probably recheck the settings and if nothing seemed incorrect, delete the connection and set it up again. If that didn't work, I might ask my VPN provider (or search their site, FAQ, etc.). If that didn't work, I might post on the appropriate Linux forum. (Kubuntu or other active Ubuntu based Linux forum) . This is how mine is set up. Yours will be different, your settings being dictated by your VPN provider, and the look of the dialogue boxes by your desktop environment. (I'm using Mate) Under "IPv4 Settings", "Method" is set to "Automatic (VPN)". . Since you seem to be running Linux, I figure you've already Googled... https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=Active+connection+State+Changed+Missing+VPN+Plugin+VPN+connection+state+changed+Device+failed+to+activate