[rtomanek]

One commercial alternative I can recommend are AVM products, somewhat popular in Europe (AVM is German).

Good hardware, frequently with open alternatives.

I currently use Fritz 4040 with 1Gbps fiber, with original firmware, works like a charm.

Excellent wifi.

[roel_v]

Fritzboxes are quite sparse. E.g there is no per-client resource use, meaningful QoS, no way to assign custom dns suffixes and no way to set static dns records. These are just some of the limitations I've run into recently, I forgot about the older ones. People have been asking for these features for literally a decade and a half, so I'm not holding my breath. My isp gives me a fritzbox for free, otherwise I can't recommend them for power users.

[rikkus]

I’m on Zen Internet in the UK and was supplied a Fritz router with the connection. WiFi was great but didn’t reach throughout the house (old, lots of brick internal walls).

I noticed they claimed they could do mesh WiFi so I tried to buy their extenders. They are built to plug directly into European power sockets, though, and when I asked AVM they advised against using an adapter for the UK and instead buying some second hand routers.

I bought two the same as my original (2nd hand on eBay, cheaper than the extenders would have been) and set them up.

It was trickier to set them up than the extenders would have been but it’s all working and pretty solid so far. I was very happy with their support.

[mrzool]

Fritz!Box 7490 here, I love it to pieces. Best router I ever owned. But I agree that the admin interface is a bit too simplified and doesn’t allow for any advanced configuration.

[ThePadawan]

5490 owner here. I feel like a bit of a dangus for asking this, but have you checked that you are in fact currently using the "advanced view" option? I was disappointed with the configurability as well until I discovered that option.