Sure, but you still wind up dealing with the craptastic device. The router I currently use which is forced upon me by my ISP will hang for a few seconds if it encounters a DLNA packet. That means several seconds of packet loss and some TCP connection being closed.

I have wasted so many hours on the phone with their support without getting anywhere. They wouldnt even acknowledge there is a problem until I showed them graphs. Then they sent an "engineer" over who also knew fuck all and accomplished nothing. He then seemed to have reported back there was nothing wrong and now they ignore me.

I should switch ISPs but the performance of the network compared to the price is excellent. Just this shitbox of a router.

How do they force the router on you? Is there really no possibility of using an alternative?

At least in Germany we had the so called "Routerzwang". Some ISPs allowed third party equipment, but many didn't. You'd get a modem / router / AP combo device and the ISP had complete control over the firmware. Since there was no competition, most ISPs didn't care about the quality of their software or even security updates.

Thankfully in the UK all the (cheap) ADSL suppliers I've used have provided a modem+router+AP in which you can just read the access credentials off the config screen. No need to spoof MAC or anything when setting up a new 'router' just use the right credentials.

Now I'm wondering why, whether it's legislation or the way our ISPs relate to the infrastructure.

Primarily because our phoneline also comes from the same ISP which has to use their shitbox. They don't give you the credentials for that, you get a pretty configured router. It's possible to root the box, steal all necessary credentials and clone the mac but that is a huge hassle and obviously not supported.

I had similar issues, and I complained enough that my ISP gave me a second, just plain stupid modem and a splitter, so now I have their fancy phone/modem/router/wifi one just for the phone, and a simple modem only box for my actual internet. Works like a charm now!

Interesting. I am moving soon so I have given up the fight for now, but I might have to aim for that after the move. Thanks for the tip.

Just keep in mind, their "first tier" of customer support probably can't authorize that kind of thing, and probably won't even know what the heck you are wanting. I complained about the crappy slow internet and bad ping until I got to their actual tech guys, and told him the older modem did better, and he was like "Well, why don't you use one of them?", I said "Need the phone", and he told me to just put a splitter on it and use both, he'd set it all up and have the local office put one aside for me. I only even pay rent on the one modem, so it's actually an amazingly good setup, other then meaning I've got the start of my own "commercial grade" networking setup attached to a wall in the basement, with the modems, the router, a switch, and a server.

In the netherlands providers has linked the wifi enable settings in their modem/router/accesspoints to their online account and if you disable the wifi you won't get access to the free networks they deployed everywhere.

This is mainly because those networks are deployed by adding an second SSID to the router with WPA enterprise auth. The solution many people choose is putting the router in the basement with a lot of aluminium foil around it.

You can also put a heavy resistor inline of the antenna.

If you can do that, you could just unplug the antenna.

But they want the router back if you switch provider. If you void the warrenty then I have to pay for it.

I don't see why this is a problem. You want to free load on other people's connections but not share your own? (In the US anyway, the free wifi you get for running that secondary SSID just comes from other people's personal connections).

This is why we can't have nice things. I hope they find a way to defeat people doing this, but my guess is it would be prohibitively expensive (war driving entire cities, etc).

The problem is that I don't have the bandwidth for it. If a single user connects to the free accesspoint and starts skype r a youtube video then I cannot use the internet anymore.

I had this problem with my Optimum router. I actually got better performance by throwing it in the closet and using a $30 dollar piece of crap instead (which has since been replaced). Sadly, it seems that everything in the consumer networking market is a trap.

Wrap the router in foil?