[drnick1]

Aren't those Fritz!Box routers (common in Europe) precisely examples of "shitty routers with terrible security?"

The first thing I would do with a typical residential Internet connection is to ask the ISP to give me an ONT so that I can use my own router, a commodity x86 PC running Linux. Their underpowered plastic boxes simply won't cut it when it comes to complex firewall rules and high VPN throughput. I also don't want to deal with their shitty web UIs and would rather script the setup I want.

[jeroenhd]

I have yet to find a security issue with it. I know German ISPs misconfigured their management network at some point, letting the Fritz!Boxes access each other, but that would've happened with any managed modem that was misconfigured like that.

I bought my Fritz!Box. My ISP has no control over it. TR-069 and other upstream management protocols have been disabled completely.

So far, I'm easily getting gigabit+ speeds across both IPv4 and IPv6. VPN is too much to ask (beyond emergency LAN access, I suppose) but that's what the home server is for.

The web UI is kind of nice, actually. Maybe not to everyone's taste, but the firewall management is a lot less of a clusterfuck than trying to properly configure simple port redirects over the command line. Heaps better than OpenWRT in my opinion. I've run my own Debian router box for a few years and I can say I'm doing just fine without.

[BadBadJellyBean]

I'd say a Fritz!Box is a good router for normal users. Easy interface. Good enough hardware. Stable modems. Some nice software features. Absolutely not a device for prosumers.

[izacus]

No, Fritzboxes have distinguished themselves by being about the best device you can hope to get from an ISP.

[drnick1]

If this is the best you can get, you are better off not renting their stuff and buying an OpenWrt One for a time $100 investment give or take.

[ahartmetz]

No really, they are pretty decent. I stopped running an old PC for router and firewall after I got a Fritzbox. It can traffic-shape, forward ports, configure fixed IP addresses and DNS names, provide limited guest access to the WiFi, analyze the WiFi spectrum (and show a graph) to choose uncongested channels, and do a whole bunch of things that I don't use but which are conceivably useful like VPN server, file server and such.

[noAnswer]

> Aren't those Fritz!Box routers (common in Europe) precisely examples of "shitty routers with terrible security?"

Not at all. They had security bugs, sure, but not constantly. Each device has a randomized admin password from the factory. Some changes require physical hardware access because one needs to press a button to confirm. They support the hardware for ages. Their 7490 model just got a feature firmware update. The model is 13 years old!

In Germany, if you ask someone where his router is he might not know what you talk about. But he understand if you asked about "your fritzbox". (Even in cases where they have something else.)

But enough of the glazing. In 2024 they got sold to private equity. Lets see how the enshittification will treat them.