Amazon tells ISPs: I can be your Eero, baby. I can ease your Wi-Fi pain. I will block bad sites forever... Amazon is to start selling its Eero mesh Wi-Fi hubs to ISPs in a move that breaks from its direct-to-consumer business model. The new product – called Eero for Service Providers – includes the router kit paired with a software platform designed to address performance and reliability scores. The router used is the Wi-Fi 6- …
Any Wi-Fi manufacturer has to contend with the fact that most people are happy to use the router sent by their broadband provider.
A number of ISPs around the world insist on one using their provided router/modem.
Germany abolished ISP locking; so far OFCOM doesn't seem to have followed suit, The EU issued a directive, followed by OFCOM to forbid cellphone locking, but inevitably the bold brexiteers will reverse this tyrannical ruling...
True. In Italy as well it took a communications authority ruling last year (built on the EU directive) to open to non ISP mandated modem/routers, a ruling ISP fought to death and eventually lost in courts. Still some attempt to make it difficult, for example making harder to obtain the correct VoIP settings.
Because it is a way to make easy money selling cheap modem/router at premium prices. I see no reason to use a device managed by someone else - Amazon and Google included. My house, my rules...
You can use your own with Comcast* but if you rent their badged version they'll give you a discount on some features (eg instead of $50 for unlimited data pay $10 to rent a router and unlimited data is only $15).
* being Comcast this will change depending where you live and which operator you spoke with last.
> Eero Insight, which is designed to identify network connectivity and reliability problems, and then automatically resolve them
So it can contact my ISP, even when the connection is down, to tell them they've fucked up again? That would solve 99% of my internet connectivity problems.
(the other 1% being a power outage, which I fixed by buying a UPS for the router. I've never had a problem with MY equipment.)
I can see some benefits for the traditional wet string connections.
Way back in the day before I had VM cable the ADSL line would go flaky from time to time.
I had a PERL script which monitored the modem for this and could tinker with various settings to try and struggle on.
A utility which regularly checked that you were getting acceptable bandwidth and low error rates and alerted the ISP if things started to degrade could be helpful.
I assume Open Reach could also do this but would demand payment from the ISPs.
I never had a problem with "flaky" connections that twiddling DSL modem settings would help. I did have occasional total service drops that only a power cycle of the modem would fix. So I had an X-10 based ping test thingy that would test the connection at 5 second intervals, with 3 different addresses in various parts of the country to ping. If all 3 failed, it would power cycle the modem, wait 2 minutes, and start testing again. 10 minutes of fail and it would try to call my cell to let me know.
Most of the time it would deal with the issue, the rest of the time it would typically at least let me know something was wrong before the client calls started.
I always use my on hardware on the end of a wires only connection. Yes most ISPs will provide a router but it never leaves the box at my house. My own router, my own APs. And if there's an ISP who insists I use their router - even in pasthru or modem mode - then they're not getting my business.
I want as much control as possible over the connection that I'm paying for thanks.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
