Curious to know if anyone can share any info about the SM3's when not using Spark/Skinny/Bigpipe as an ISP (off network).

I'm currently with quic.
Recently I noticed my Skinny SM3 was playing up so was looking at the logs and noticed NTP was failing.
The previous two years I was using the SM3 with spark but didnt notice if it was happening then. 

I found this older GZ post which left me wondering about functions that may be missing/unavailble when the SM3's are off network.
From the post it seems that NTP will not work and given the reasoning I fully understand (DDoS attack). 
I am also unsure how or if updates can be applied.

Are there possibly hidden settings that can be accessed such as the firmware update page "router-ip/autofw" to manually make changes to NTP.
It may also be that I have an out of date firmware V1.00.02 build003 and an update would provide access to more settings.
I'm trying to figure out if there are any other gotchas when using an SM3 off network.

I like the SM3s and they work well for relatives using Spark etc but due to their situations and/or price increase they may be moving to a different ISP.
I had been planning on using existing SM3's for myself and relatives as a backup router in case of a future "fancier home network setup" failing but may need to rethink that.