Quote from: agswin on October 22, 2018, 06:34:27 PM

netstat isnt telling me much. however i did find another thread on this firmware.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4760043.0

I almost read all posts from this thread and I don't find any legit reviews about this firmware.
taserz is asking for a source code of this firmware, but OP doesn't give any open source and maybe it's a clone firmware with additional dev fee.

So, I think the firmware is not safe, I advise you to flash it back to the original firmware and follow this guide How To Overclock Your S9/T9+,T9,R4 To 18TH/s Free. you can edit your miner manually with your own without doubt of having dev fee when mining.