And never mind, my previous post / theory crafting about limiting other app / program access to the internet is sadly pointless... I just continued my experiment today, had literally nothing else connecting to the internet, and after 45min still got the 2002 error. On top of that, every immediate login attempt I made resulted in further 2002 errors, until I had lost my place in the queue.

I swear, if I didn't know better, it felt like it was actively trying to disconnect me because I wasn't sitting at my computer. This is so damn frustrating. >_<