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Comment by userbinator | Hacker News Reader

It's always annoyed me that ISPs seem to like giving customers these horribly overcomplex modems as well as other "value-added features" like "inject advertisements into the user’s unencrypted web traffic" --- especially since customers are already paying them for the service.

My vision for an ideal modem is more like a dumb Ethernet to coax/fiber/etc. adapter, and is otherwise as unobtrusive as possible. Ditto for an ideal ISP: just sell access to the raw, unfiltered Internet, and nothing else.

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> My vision for an ideal modem is more like a dumb Ethernet to coax/fiber/etc. adapter

You'd like Europe then.

You know where we have competing ISPs and this is the standard.

In fairness, comcast (big US ISP) allows you to buy your own cable modem. However, they are terrible for multiple other reasons that would not fly in Europe (data caps, lobbying to resell browsing history, opaque pricing schemes, etc)

But at least they have the freedom to do so, unlike Europe where their right to screw over their customers is unfairly infringed.

Sarcasm?

Is it though? Freedom and regulatory overreach arguments are being used right now, with a straight face, to eliminate net neutrality rules that prohibit ISPs from screwing over their customers. Is it really sarcasm if it's actually happening?

That's why I ask. I legitimately cannot tell because people actually think this.

By which you mean that Comcast will let you buy an approved device to which (I believe) they fully control by design.

Pretty much, Cable Modem Hacking is extremely uncommon and even an owned modem is out of your control. Look at all the Intel PUMA cable modems with bufferbloat issues where the cable ISP refuses to update said modem to fix the software bug causing bufferbloat.

DOCSIS modems are a standard, but cable companies often get to manage them with their firmware and/or settings.

Not if you're on a Comcast Business plan with static IPs; you're limited to what they'll give you, even though people have shown that their static IP-setup works with customer provided gear.

Well, there are some reasons for this, such as making sure the equipment is good and can easily be checked on/configured by support to meet service level guarantees (which are a thing with some business contracts). It's just not a very good reason.

Deep packet inspection, network throttling based on traffic type, ...

Sources:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/12/comcast-throws-1...

https://www.cnet.com/news/fcc-formally-rules-comcasts-thrott...

I don't know, my friends from Croatia would disagree, as would I, but I'm not in the EU, only in Europe (Serbia), you get a black box modem/router from the provider which they can access in any way, and it has open Telnet and HTTP admin with credentials like "admin/ztonpk; admin/tzlkisonpk; admin/telekom; telekom/telekom; and let's not forget admin/admin"... I think this is just in large EU countries that you don't get shitty modems full of security holes... But I'm not even sure of that anymore...

Europe is not a country. The only FTTH provider in Athens gives you a locked-down Huawei GPON modem/router where you can't even enable bridge mode to bypass its routing/NAT

My ISP seems to do the best of both worlds.

The modems, by default, do WiFi, NAT, and have a 4-port switch on the back. The default WLAN name and password is printed on a sticker that's on the modem, they're unique per modem. Same for the admin user. I don't know if they allow SSH and if the SSH password is unique per modem however.

If you ask for the modem to be put into bridge mode, which they will happily do, the WiFi and NAT get disabled and whatever you plug in to the modem gets assigned a real IP address. When I upgraded my service and required a new modem they actually asked if I wanted it in bridge mode. All of this is configured on their side and the modem seems to pull the configuration when you first boot it.

Dumbish DOCSIS cable and dumb DSL modems exist, they're just not default because most people aren't technically-literate enough to deploy them. However, cable ISPs often can update the firmware of DOCSIS modems, so who know what potential is there for backdoors, malware, NSA diodeing and weak security. DSL modem management may vary.

Treat all networks and network termination equipment as compromised. Make your general case a special case of your corner case and you won't have to deal with multiple logic paths - at worst you'll have to do some extra work but at least you won't find things broken when you need them most.

My experience has been that ISPs are downright dishonest about it. AT&T and Verizon have both lied to me about how their locked down crummy routers are superior, which isn't true.

You'll love The Netherlands. Your ISP is forced, on your request, to put your modem in bridge mode. Ie. the ISP isn't able to force customers to use a certain modem as router.

TBH, in Serbia, Telekom does give you a modem that you have full control over, it's just a shame that everyone else who types in your IP gets the same control too... Basically they can change any setting that you can, but you can request they give you xDSL config params and buy your own modem which doesn't have routing functionality...

Thats what I have via my FTTH provider: plain DHCP enabled ethernet - a media converter is all what is needed. After that: the customer gets to decide what equipment to use/own.

My ISP runs plain Gbit Ethernet over Fiber. I'm using my own PFSense based router (actually, a VM on a MacMini running VMware ESXi).

These ISPs exist, but as smaller companies, they often serve a small subset of the population.

As the customer base grows, so does the need for easier management, so eventually, you'll end up in situations like the one described by OP.

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