ok, I got impatient and went ahead and upgraded the firmware anyway.

It's much better. Many more features. Also, the upgraded version of the SNMP util they use for it does NOT allow you to change the subnet mask. BUT, it keeps the last one you set, AND, the little hack I was talking about was another snmp manager that DOES allow you to change the subnet ( and db output among other things), so i'm all good.

Now to test client mode with the empeg