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by yardstick 2535 days ago
Re consumers, I can’t comment on how common they are, but people will have the ISP router, and then their router. They should ideally bridge but that doesn’t always happen, either due to just not knowing you should do that, or the ISP router/modem is a piece of junk that doesn’t support bridging or has quirks.

In the commercial/business space it’s more common to see 3 deep. I see it every day. Petroleum in particular often has ISP Router -> Site Firewall/Router -> ServiceProvider Router, because the fuel tank monitoring equipment is behind its own router so the vendor can get remote access/send data back over VPNs they manage.

In retail environments, especially malls and concession stands within department stores, it’s common to be plugged into their network, which you’ll want your own firewall protecting your PCs etc. I’ve also seen businesses at the same office building pool resources and share the one internet connection, with each having their own firewall/router behind the primary site firewall/router.

There’s also hotspots, where the business both puts that infrastructure on a separate network from their back office, and the hotspots themselves are doing NAT too.

Also some payment processors these days are pushing for organisations to install their own router behind the customers network and route all payments via that (Rather than customer managed IPsec VPNs or straight TLS over the Internet).

Yeah it’s definitely common.