AVM - FRITZ!Box 4040

AVM Fritzbox is generally considered one of the best home user WiFi router brands. They do however have very different categories of devices. For example the Fritzbox 4040 is the least powerful model in their current lineup with only WiFi5 at 800 Mbit/s max Speed (it has only one spatial stream) The top model for DSL - 7690 comes with WiFi7 and has 4 or 5 antennas in its case. Neither of their models sold in 2024 comes with detachable antennas anymore though, so if your wifi router sits in a bad spot you can't improve its range without moving the whole box. Netgear and TP-Link are big brands in the home user space that don't require much knowledge for set-up. Both brands have a wide range of models from low budget to super expensive long range or high bandwidth models. For semi professional use Lancom and Unifi/Ubiquity are great brands, but are a serious step up in terms of setup complexity and feature set. No brand will magically fix bad WiFi signals or problems with bad placement/heavily shielded walls and interference though. You might be better off looking for help in a subreddit for networking and show them a floor plan to help you plan the best wifi setup for your use case.

Both renting or buying are valid options. The telekom routers are not bad. The advantage of renting is that they will replace the router if it breaks or if for reasons of modernization you need a new one, but both of these cases are rare. Fritzbox are generally easy to use and seen as reliable; also they get software updates for a long time usually - at least in the past it was usually 10 years after the introduction of a model, possibly even more. However the manufacturer of Fritzbox (AVM) has been bought by an investor last year (I believe, maybe even 2023), so it is quiet probable that the software update policy will worsen. I still would buy a fritzbox though if I would want to buy a router. Which router you could buy depends on what technology your internet access is. The most common ones are DSL or Glasfaser (fibre). Some buildings have cable internet.

GenieACS works fine with fritzboxes. What exactly does not work for you? How do you feed the ACS URL to your boxes, do they even register in the ACS?

Renting is the better option and Fritz! Box is the way to go (made in Berlin, Germany, for all the r/BuyfromEU reasons).

FritzBox (although that‘s a product name, the company is called AVM) is one of the best options out there. That being said: even AVM has older versions and malfunctioning devices. I‘he owned quire a few of their routers and on average they were good at their job and lasted for a long time

The speedports work, but they are very basic. If you want a more configurable option, you can use the speedport as a modem and attach e.g. a FRITZ!Box. That seems too much but this way the Telekom support can still check the connection with whatever proprietary thing they do with the speedport.

As an American living in Germany, I have the FRITZ!Box and the RT AX86U pro.

Do you have any advice or resources on getting this setup? I tried playing with GenieACS and I could not get it working at all. Also using Fritzboxes.

Honestly it's been over a year since I tried it and gave up. I remember having spent weeks on it and lots of time searching forums. I remember I was able to trigger some kind of authentication thing where the lights on the box would blink, but I wasn't able to push config to it. I also don't think it was showing up in my ACS server at all. I had it directly connected to my laptop and was running GenieACS in a VM with a bridged adapter. I know that's not helpful in the slightest, so I was wondering if there happened to be any step-by-step tutorials on how to get it working with Fritzboxes that I somehow missed when I was looking at this a long time ago.

Had one a few years back and hated it, well maybe my lack of experience had a play in it but the connection was horrid and it always gave us problems.

AVM Fritzbox is one of the best router brands. You might have an ancient model or someone did some interesting Things to the settings. Tell us the model and the Provider, then we might be able to Help you.

I always bought the routers. A bought Fritz!Box is a good option. I use a Draytek Vigor in another house. Works fine, too.

You don’t seem to have too much experience with networking or self hosting so far, but that’s totally fine. I would still recommend the Fritz!Box instead of any more complicated router or firewall setups. It’s a solid device, can be extended with Mesh Routers etc, has a simple interface and good knowledgebase articles. Also has wireguard pre installed if you want to get into vpns later on. See what kind of cable connection you have, get the fitting model and enjoy. It’s a good choice

You don’t seem to have too much experience with networking or self hosting so far, but that’s totally fine. I would still recommend the Fritz!Box instead of any more complicated router or firewall setups. It’s a solid device, can be extended with Mesh Routers etc, has a simple interface and good knowledgebase articles. Also has wireguard pre installed if you want to get into vpns later on. See what kind of cable connection you have, get the fitting model and enjoy. It’s a good choice

Another vote for Fritzbox. Arguably the best vdsl routers out of the few still doing them. And lots of VoIP/DECT support too.

Au her have had 2

Whatever the reason for that is, it's not the FRITZ, FRITZs are the best you can get. Either the router is defect, too old or something complete different is wrong. The speed or other of Chrome has nothing to do with a router or bad WifI. If it's the box, something is broken, or it's quite old (a 7430). I have an older one, and never any issues. I will get cable with 200M6bit in the near future and the cable company saw no issue because of it. I can keep it.