Free to use router "managed" by ISP

[isie]

So just to be clear on the naughty list which I need to avoid like a skunk that has stepped in hyena poo:
- Vodacom
- Mind the Speed
Any others who don't provide login details?

Mind the speed only if you take their Zyxel router (and this seems to be a recent thing though) - if you take the subsidy option (they pay about 800 bucks for whatever router your want) or you use your own (obviously ) you can manage it yourself

 

[cavedog]

So just to be clear on the naughty list which I need to avoid like a skunk that has stepped in hyena poo:
- Vodacom
- Mind the Speed
Any others who don't provide login details?

Add

Vox
Supersonic

 

[The_Ogre]

So you can't just reset these routers to factory defaults?

 

[Nerfherder]

madness pure madness,
I get why people want this, but seriously? not everybody has the intelligence of JUJU and the Brains of Dudu,

some of us know how to manage our own routers and switches perfectly well enough.

I think most just don't have the computer know how to for it to really be useful them.
If I think back on all the friends/family members that I have had to help out with some router issue it makes sense that all of them would have done better with a remotely administered one.

I have a "free" mikrotik from Vox and I promised myself that I would pull it out and replace it with the expensive one I had already bought but haven't actually bothered because I have never needed to change anything.
Then if anything does go wrong I have to sit with some tech on the phone with 20 years less exp than me trying to fix something that can be done remotely.

 

[Nerfherder]

So you can't just reset these routers to factory defaults?

You can always do this.

 

[ld13]

Accelerit also provides a managed router. But one quick hard reset and you log into it (without plugging it into the ONT), and can then kill the management port etc.

 

[RyanPCMR]

Why on earth would anybody want to have that type of router setup? It sounds like a very archaic practice to have that level of control over someone else's paid connectivity! LOL!!!

 

[backstreetboy]

So you can't just reset these routers to factory defaults?

If they provided you with the internet login details otherwise you're screwed and they'll most definitely throw the t&c's at you and force you to pay for the router because you mucked about with it. No thanks.

I think most just don't have the computer know how to for it to really be useful them.
If I think back on all the friends/family members that I have had to help out with some router issue it makes sense that all of them would have done better with a remotely administered one.

I have a "free" mikrotik from Vox and I promised myself that I would pull it out and replace it with the expensive one I had already bought but haven't actually bothered because I have never needed to change anything.
Then if anything does go wrong I have to sit with some tech on the phone with 20 years less exp than me trying to fix something that can be done remotely.

The help I had to give was trivial stuff and for them to send a support ticket would've just been a major PITA. Prefer to manage it myself and there's always stuff you want to change.

 

[Johnatan56]

They did inform you, you likely just ignored it and didn’t bother to read all the T&C’s quoted or linked when signing up.

Many local ISP’s do this now and it’s been standard form internationally for decades.

Nothing is ever truly free.

It's not the standard internationally, not sure what crappy ISP you've gotten.

 

[Gnome]

Every device you add between you and your ISP decreases reliability, increases latency and increases your attack surface. Remote management should be opt in. This is one of those "smart" ideas, that I imagine it was thought up by some guy who previously worked for a company IT department before cloud computing made him redundant. They trained him about restricting access to everything "for the greater good" and now he wants to bring these "advanced" concepts to "those most in need".

I trust 3rd party device so little that I'm pretty much on a fiber to ethernet converter (hardware converter, just plain hardware, not software based), straight into PFSense. Net effect is I never reboot, never have problems unless the ISP broke something. For me uptime matters. For another customer other things matter, just give the customer what they want.

Replace that with some cheap router that only you can run and you have endless problems for power users and your non-power users still call in all the time with problems. The first problem was that you bought cheap routers and your end mile installation sucks and gets damaged all the time

You can't fix that by squeezing your customers into your corporate management mindset ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[isie]

Why on earth would anybody want to have that type of router setup? It sounds like a very archaic practice to have that level of control over someone else's paid connectivity! LOL!!!

Personally I agree with you as I like to set up my stuff and need to have control over my network but just looking at some of the complaints people make on our local fibre group I can see the benefit for the non tech savvy - the issues are not actually fibre connectivity but on their setup and having the ISP fix this for them means the ISP get less complaints on a service issue which is not really The ISP or even the FNO issue.

 

[SauRoNZA]

It's not the standard internationally, not sure what crappy ISP you've gotten.

Predominantly in the US and the UK but also many others it’s quite normal for ISP’s to provide managed router devices.

You then either use it end-to-end the way they’ve provided it or you attach your own router and they configure it to output the WAN IP directly to the down stream device.

 

[SauRoNZA]

Every device you add between you and your ISP decreases reliability, increases latency and increases your attack surface. Remote management should be opt in. This is one of those "smart" ideas, that I imagine it was thought up by some guy who previously worked for a company IT department before cloud computing made him redundant. They trained him about restricting access to everything "for the greater good" and now he wants to bring these "advanced" concepts to "those most in need".

I trust 3rd party device so little that I'm pretty much on a fiber to ethernet converter (hardware converter, just plain hardware, not software based), straight into PFSense. Net effect is I never reboot, never have problems unless the ISP broke something. For me uptime matters. For another customer other things matter, just give the customer what they want.

Replace that with some cheap router that only you can run and you have endless problems for power users and your non-power users still call in all the time with problems. The first problem was that you bought cheap routers and your end mile installation sucks and gets damaged all the time

You can't fix that by squeezing your customers into your corporate management mindset ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You sound exactly like said IT guy you accuse of setting this up.

The reality is by and large that the customers of ISP’s are idiots who fiddle with things they don’t understand and then break them leading to more support hours lost and issues to deal with which means less money for ISP’s.

Managed devices make perfect sense at scale with the lowest common denominators in play.

You speak of attack surface, but idiot users are the biggest increase to attack vectors and the most likely to do things like turn off their firewall or add internal IP’s to their DMZ to fix a problem they don’t understand because Google says so.

Users with managed devices also never reboot and also have endless uptime because they can’t change stuff. It’s really that simple.

While it annoys those of us who know what we are doing, by and large providing a managed device does in fact lead to a more reliable network overall and much simpler (and better) support.

Ironically this is the standard for large enterprise contracts more so than domestic ones.

 

[SauRoNZA]

You can always do this.

In the case of Mikrotiks it can actually be setup to always reset back to the ISP default configuration.

I don’t know if they actually do it, but it can be done.

I’m sure the same is possible with others where the firmware can be flashed directly.

 

[SauRoNZA]

Why on earth would anybody want to have that type of router setup? It sounds like a very archaic practice to have that level of control over someone else's paid connectivity! LOL!!!

We have a mindset in South Africa of self-managing and self-supporting things like these because since the Dawn of DSL it has been the norm for us to do it all by hand.

The rest of the world very much has always seen this as part of the service they pay for and part of their contract of support to have things done for them, much the same way you don’t service your own car but take it to the dealership to he sorted out.

Obviously this being an IT forum it’s an non-issue for us but this is exactly the kind of thing every non-IT person doesn’t want to be involved with and why us nerds get called to do these things.

This is exactly how it should be done for the vast majority of people out there.

Not only frees up the ISP, but also frees up my time from people wanting advice.

 

[isie]

Not only frees up the ISP, but also frees up my time from people wanting advice.

 

[r00igev@@r]

We have a mindset in South Africa of self-managing and self-supporting things like these because since the Dawn of DSL it has been the norm for us to do it all by hand.

The rest of the world very much has always seen this as part of the service they pay for and part of their contract of support to have things done for them, much the same way you don’t service your own car but take it to the dealership to he sorted out.

Obviously this being an IT forum it’s an non-issue for us but this is exactly the kind of thing every non-IT person doesn’t want to be involved with and why us nerds get called to do these things.

This is exactly how it should be done for the vast majority of people out there.

Not only frees up the ISP, but also frees up my time from people wanting advice.

You are 100% correct. However, when you business is being a managed service provider looking after customers and an ISP refuses you access to a router (or to use your own) then that is unacceptable. The demarcation device should be a carrier ethernet certified ONT that is transparent to subscriber interaction. This is what you are talking about what is being used overseas, not a cheap router as the demarc.
And if you have a Vodacom link, it really frees up their time. They ignore you forever...

 

[faraaz93]

You can add Herotel to this list.

Finally got through to someone from management, who then agreed to refund and i can purchase a router i like with full control, just do not mess with their PPPOE settings.

On that note, Herotel offers free Installation and router, if you cancel within a year, you pay. So i guess it does belong to you then? With my previous WISP, you pay installation, however it always belongs to them (They cover insurance too, and replace at no cost with some T&C's).

They supplied some outdated TP Link router, which does not catch wireless past the room it is in.

I am considering purchasing a newish Tenda since my previous WISP supplied a Tenda router, pretty impressed with the Wifi range and management app, any other recommendations in that price range ?

 

[AfriNatic]

We have a mindset in South Africa of self-managing and self-supporting things like these because since the Dawn of DSL it has been the norm for us to do it all by hand.

The rest of the world very much has always seen this as part of the service they pay for and part of their contract of support to have things done for them, much the same way you don’t service your own car but take it to the dealership to he sorted out.

Obviously this being an IT forum it’s an non-issue for us but this is exactly the kind of thing every non-IT person doesn’t want to be involved with and why us nerds get called to do these things.

This is exactly how it should be done for the vast majority of people out there.

Not only frees up the ISP, but also frees up my time from people wanting advice.

Can't agree with you more on this. For a non technical person resetting a router and then setting up pppoe is about a 3 hour phone call if you are lucky. Managing routers remotely is pretty much the solution.

You have the majority on the left about 70%+ non technical people and then you have 30% technical people to your right. When a client places an order with you how would you know their technical skill when it comes to router setups an management and that is why ISPs supply locked routers because when someone that is not technical logs into a router an see pppoe username and password they can easily mistake that for Wifi username and password and kill the connection without even knowing causing support requests.

I think a unlocked router but with remote access for the ISP is the best way to go. The ISP can make changes and fixes in a few minutes and the issue is resolved.

 

[Kola_CT]

If you can and want to manage your own router, just use your own or factory reset the router you have.
You accept the risk of that part of the connection when something goes wrong.

Vox also installs a managed router.

ISPs do that because they do not know how tech savvy the clients are, and for many it works just fine.