The thing is that SSH is not, in fact, as easy as installing a .bin and telnetting into the device to me. I keep getting
these symptoms (except for the part where the issue fixed itself; I'm not that fortunate): after explicitly setting the IP address with "#ip address add 192.168.2.2 dev usb0", I can ping the device, but after I use the telnet command, I get a "connection refused" and the network becomes unreachable afterward (even with ping). Using putty keeps the network intact, but still returns "connection refused".