Wow, that's one expensive Terminal Mode device!
First of all, both Jonathan and I support Terminal and Access Point mode via the OPC-2350LU serial-to-USB cable. Of course, I think QnetGateway is a more reliable TAP client.
Reading the 9700 manual, it looks like it supports the data port for TAP modes. If you insist on using the LAN port on the 9700, I would have the same question Jonathan has when you asked him for the same development: Where's the ICOM documentation? The probable answer, ICOM doesn't have it and won't make it available anytime soon, so some reverse engineering is needed.
What now seems like a long time ago, QnetGateway gave up the ability to run different pieces of the package on different computers. All communications between the various modems, the gateway and the link program occur over Unix datagram sockets, not UDP sockets. Unix datagram sockets are file based and so the server and client have to be on the same machine. The one exception is that you should be able to run MMDVMHost on a different machine as QnetGateway, as that communication still via UDP.
Reintroducing IP communication between the gateway and modems is possible. It could be software configurable, but the administration of that begins to look too complicated for both me and QnetGateway users, and it adds code to almost every program in the QnetGateway package that most configurations won't every use. A simpler approach would be to leave QnetGateway alone and develop a simple translator application. This new application would be very much like the CQnetRelay class that would connect to Unix datagram ports at one end and to a UDP (or even better, a TCP) LAN or WAN port at the other end.
Tom Early