Because it’s a niche application. The router that came from my ISP doesn’t have bridge mode, but it does have DMZ and it’s good enough for my needs.

I'm just happy you can still, sometimes, buy your own 3rd party modem to replace the junk that the ISP charges rent for.

Sadly that ended for me when they went to fiber. Apparently there's no way around having to use thier stuff and pay rent for it.

Quoting: damarrinBecause it’s a niche application. The router that came from my ISP doesn’t have bridge mode, but it does have DMZ and it’s good enough for my needs.

Sure, but it's weird that they just don't exist. I mean, there are mSATA to IDE adapters ... do those have a bigger market compared to what pci-e dsl modems *would* have if they existed? The controller chips can't be expensive or rare, since they come with the crappiest combo boxes.

Well, if you got one of those, you’d need drivers. Support might materialise, or it might not. Then there’s config. Knowing the way things are done, you’d need an app to configure it. So perhaps it’s better we get standalone units that’ll work everywhere.

If you want to try something cheap, try the bt home hub v5a - the same hardware that the plusnet hub one.

They can run custom firmware - openwrt - with a little effort, which is a fun project in itself.

You can find them already flashed cheap on ebay if you dont fancy soldering.

There is excellent documentation from bill here

This is not the kind of hardware you are used to ( it cant compare with a RT-N66U ) but still has adsl /vdsl2, 4 gigabit switch and a usb port you can use to power a raspbery pi zero as a pihole.

Last edited by buono on 30 May 2021 at 9:22 pm UTC

Ended up with an RT-AX56U seemed like the best compromise price/performace/power consumption .

Just hope it's wifi doesn't suck

I have one of these: https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-b1300/

Comes with a customized version of OpenWRT out of the box, but can be flashed with vanilla OpenWRT.

Due to the lack of external antenna the wifi range isn't the best, but otherwise it works great.

Also have a look at the other products of this company. AFAIK they all come with OpenWRT.

I use netgear R6220.
It runs Linux and it's cheap - never tried custom firmwares - but has hidden telnet access that allows you to tweak network and usb settings via standard /proc and /sys kernel/userspace interfaces.
Doing that doubled (!) his ftp/samba performances and improved usb speeds too. I even installed dropbear for fun.
Unfortunately those settings does not survive reboot, but a script on the raspberry pi does everything for me anytime i need to reboot it.
If you are in low budget, consider it as good router and usb2 nas, good value after tweaks. But nothing more than that.

It seems openwrt can be installed on it.

Last edited by kokoko3k on 2 June 2021 at 2:37 pm UTC

I'm using the netgear WNR3500L (sold as N300?) for some years now and am very happy with it. Never had any problems. The automatic update sometimes fails if a new version for the language file is not available, but manually uploading and starting the update via the web-interface always works.
Regarding custom firmware, I don't know. But the rest of your requirements is met. And it's quite cheap also.