wrog

well okay, what I want is to be able to write a perl script that powercycles my DSL modem whenever we detect that port 25 has not received any spam in a while and subsequent pings to a selection of internet sites get no response. Here "powercycle" includes the insertion of a random delay of between 15 and 35 seconds between power off and power on, because apparently these things need it, followed by a 10-15 minute wait period for the DSLAM on the other end to come back from the dead...
... in other words just sufficiently weird that the Joe Consumer device is probably not going to do the Right Thing if all I can tell it to do is "powercycle" or if it insists on following its own watchdog script which is designed around rebooting servers and can't check for the things I want it to

What's annoying is I can do the software part; I just need the stupid device and don't want to spend more money than I have to on somebody else's b0rken UI (and then having to work around it).