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A detailed look at the router provided by my ISP

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Re: A detailed look at the router provided by my ISP

#61
post #56
post #30

In the Netherlands we now have a law where ISPs must allow your own choice of network equipment. This means they must give you the required information on how to connect your own device with their network. I have a fiber connection, which I connected directly to a Ubiquity router through a suitable SFP module. My ISP supplied the information on the fiber type and which VLAN ID's to setup for internet, TV and telephon…

I have Spectrum cable Internet. I use their modem, but I supply my own router, and they've never given me any trouble. In fact, they recently upgraded my modem (from a Scientific Atlanta 2203C to a Ubee E31U2V1) and they didn't send me a router. The Ubee E31U2V1, like the Scientific Atlanta 2203C before it, only has one Ethernet port, and their official guide to getting the new modem working involved rebooting an ext…

> I don't see a point to being able to provide my own cable modem

Other cable providers (e.g. Comcast) charge you a monthly fee (~$5-15) to rent their modem. Buying a modem gets cost effective pretty quickly.

Re: A detailed look at the router provided by my ISP

#62
post #30

In the Netherlands we now have a law where ISPs must allow your own choice of network equipment. This means they must give you the required information on how to connect your own device with their network. I have a fiber connection, which I connected directly to a Ubiquity router through a suitable SFP module. My ISP supplied the information on the fiber type and which VLAN ID's to setup for internet, TV and telephon…

What's you cost and speed of the fiber?

Also, if you didn't need so much bandwidth, is it possible to just order a basic 100Mb/10mb connection for a nominal fee of, say, 30Euro?

The speeds in the US aren't actually that bad, but you're basically forced to pay for everything: paid cable TV, equipment rental fees, etc, and your $40 plan ends up creeping towards $100 / month after the fees and taxes, with increases every year.

Re: A detailed look at the router provided by my ISP

#63
post #5

...and that's why my ISPs router is running in modem mode with a non-ISP-controlled router from Ubiquiti behind it - which I may replace with a pfSense box in the future. I'm pretty happy that my cable ISP is allowing this mode so I don't have to double-NAT in my setup.

I recently upgraded my internet speed and my pfSense box was limiting my top download speed. So, I just went from pfSense to a Ubiquiti Secure Gateway. There are pros and cons of each, but I couldn't find any trustworthy pfSense hardware with the performance of a USG for anywhere near the same price. I do miss the configurability of pfSense though so I might switch back some day. That said, the ubiquiti interface and provisioning model is really slick.

Re: A detailed look at the router provided by my ISP

#64
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ISPs hate it because it it makes their lives a lot harder - in cable networks, they now have to deal with a zoo of endpoints on a shared medium vs. a small set of standardized devices. In other words, ISPs hate it because it forces them to actually do their jobs and be ISPs. The Internet itself is "a zoo of endpoints on a shared medium", and ISP stands for Internet Service Provider.

It's not the provision of Internet that's the problem, it's the customer service requests. e.g., AT&T could provide perfect service to the home endpoint, but the customer bought some aftermarket router from their cousin, who had configured it for Verizon. Customer calls AT&T to holler. Tier 1 support doesn't know what that particular router config GUI even looks like, so it gets bumped to T2 or T3. Ultimately to find…

Well, my understanding is that once you have your own router, it's up to you to ensure its configured correctly.

Re: A detailed look at the router provided by my ISP

#65

It's funny to think that if you were to report all of your findings to your local newspaper (Turkish newspaper in this case), as to how Turkish ISPs have complete access to your router or how Huawei (China) has an SSH key for your router, people would go absolutely ballistic. But for us it's just another day of expected craziness and we're tired of talking about it

Turkish newspapers are almost universally subservient to the autocratic government. Any free press that's still somehow around has way more consequential dictatorial abuses of power to report on, if they dare.

Re: A detailed look at the router provided by my ISP

#66
post #4

Trivia: Strictly speaking a box that does NAT is not a router in the IP protocol sense, it's a kind of proxy. The router requirements RFC explicitly forbids altering most fields (incl the address field) in the IP header.

Trivia: Strictly speaking a box that does NAT is not a kind of proxy. Proxies act as the destination end point of one connection, establish a separate connection to another endpoint and forward data between the two separate connections. A NAT device changes IP header information such as the address field and if also doing PAT the port field but doesn't act as the source or destination for connections.

Re: A detailed look at the router provided by my ISP

#69

It's funny to think that if you were to report all of your findings to your local newspaper (Turkish newspaper in this case), as to how Turkish ISPs have complete access to your router or how Huawei (China) has an SSH key for your router, people would go absolutely ballistic. But for us it's just another day of expected craziness and we're tired of talking about it

> how Turkish ISPs have complete access to your router

You think it is going to blow people's socks off that a router provided and controlled by an ISP is accessible by that same ISP? Huh?

The Huawei SSH key is a little strange, but depressingly common for network equipment, even big names like Cisco[0].

[0] https://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurit...

Re: A detailed look at the router provided by my ISP

#70
post #45

Apparently a polish carrier called Multimedia has recently introduced a new, revolutionary service for some customers. It's called "set up a custom wi-fi configuration", and it's just 5 pln (a little over $1)! It lets you think up of a ssid and password, and configure your router to use those! That's an amazing invention, isn't it? /s Some customers apparently have absolutely no access to their routers, not even to t…

Couldn't you just daisy chain a second router via Ethernet and use it? Bonus points for VPN-ing all of your traffic.

Daisy-chaining routers is can severely degrade some services (gaming, p2p) due to NAT. Assuming the ISP-provided one supports PCP or UPnP-IGD you need a client on your own router that relays port forwarding configuration to the upstream router. This is possible but may need non-trival setup.
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