A big thank-you to everyone who replied, called, sent kind words and shared frustration. Clearly I'm not alone here (even had frustration shared by people who actually work in a different business unit of Verizon), and it would be nice if the folks at VZ would take some steps to fix these apparently-endemic problems but so far no joy. Eventually I got called back by someone who, after listening to what I want to do, said "I know... we can turn off the MOCA and turn on the Ethernet right on your ONT, bypassing the firewall completely. Would that accomplish what you want to do?" I said yes, and we're now sailing happily along. No word yet on whether this burns our ability to get FIOS TV or not. Also, sadly, no way to repeat it other than the old "escalate, escalate, escalate" dance. I'm still not clear on how this was supposed to be a "business" service if you weren't intended to hang your own CPE on it. -r