I'm glad that seeing "ping" running with "telnetd" as its parameter looked weird to me, enough so that I thought it was a typo at first. Shows I'm learning at least something about Linux here and there. :-)

I wish you the best of luck, Stu, on getting the fiber service gateway tweaked to your liking. I fully support the idea of one using one's own hardware on a cable/fiber company's line. That's as it should be.

But I will warn that I've had trouble in that area before. Though it was with a cable modem on Comcast, so it's a different situation. Be prepared for trouble, is what I'm saying. My trouble was this:

- I wanted the monthly modem charge offa my cable bill. I wanted to buy my own modem and save the $10.00/mo
- I needed the modem to be one with Voip line plugs in it (for my land line and burglar alarm).
- That limited the number of modems I could buy. There really was only one kind readily available as a "new" item, a particular Arris unit that Comcast supported.
- The Arris unit would work for a few months and then mysteriously brick to an unrepairable state. Neither Arris nor Comcast tech support was able to fix the modem, and there was a lot of finger pointing.
- I went through something like three of these things before a Comcast tech told me in confidence that it was known issue, that it was possible to remotely brick the Arris modems via bad remote commands and/or bad automatic firmware updates from the cable company.
- I had to ebay a whole different model/make of modem, this time one with the Xfinity logo on it. (Took two tries to find one on ebay which wasn't a reclaimed/blacklisted unit.) That one has been working steadily for years now.

Let us know how it goes for you.