AVM - FRITZ!Box 7530 AX

Fritzbox routers are solid, easy to configure, have lots of functions and are supported with updates for really long. you can buy them used aswell. models i can recommend: 7590 AX v2 7530 AX (i have this one, it does everything it needs to do) cable idk.

Do not buy a router provided by Telekom or Vodafone, IMO they are overpriced and not worth the money. Do you know if you will have DSL or Fiber? I can recommend the FRITZ!Box 7530 AX for DSL and the FRITZ!Box 5530 Fiber. I would buy them used on ebay or Kleinanzeigen. There you should get these models for under 120€

Hi, im a service tech from Telekom, i can confirm that there are some regions (esp the norther Germany) are experiencing peering issues. Here in the south it is not that bad. Tl;dr: O² is a solid pick, personally im not a huge fan of them but they have a subjective good routing and public peering. If you are unhappy with your Speedport Smart 4 (i guess it is that one for 6,95€) you can return it through the 14day return policy. Personally, i think the Smart 4 is one of our good products, if you dont want to tinker THAT much with it since its WLAN performance is usable and the WiFi Mesh is tightly integrated. While you can enter custom PPPoE credentials some services may not work like VoIP. If your ISP of choice doesnt support Dualstack... prepare for trouble Fritz! routers on the other hand are THE most flexible consumer(friendly) brand in Germany to this date. Esp when it comes to DS-Lite support. If we wont supply you with fiber it is very likely that you only have Vodafone or O² as a option, sometimes there is a local ISP (the local Stadtwerke), in my case Netcom BW, who will run the fibre network. 1&1, Vodafone, O² aand many others CAN (often called open access) use our Telekom Fibre network either via Bitstream (aka LS2BSA) or as a Wholesale (means we do most of the routing). The later one will not change your latency/routing for most cases. Another factor is DS-Lite, most ISPs use it, sometimes CGNAT, this does add latency to some degree, altho i wouldnt worry to much about it. Services which NEED a public IPv4 will suffer if the peering is suboptimal since there is more NAT involved and the peers are overloaded. EDIT: Fritz! routers i would pick: \- 7590 AX v2 \- 7530 AX \- 4060 (req. a external modem) \- 7690 (IF you need Wifi7 for MLO, the 7690 does NOT have the 6GHz band) The 7590 (non AX) and 7490 are old by now, esp the 7490 (launch 2013).

Fritzbox router 7530 AX with mesh repeater 1200 AX has worked out really well for me. In the UK, and it's the primary supported router from my ISP. Rock solid, but probably not that common in the States. Eero seems to be a good technical alternative, but I'm also a bit concerned about the Amazon connection...

If you can wire APs with network cable, that's always the best option. Obviously buy the same type, Ideally with central management, like Unifi for example. But for many, running the cable is just too tricky. In a network engineer, but live in an old brick-built house with hardwood floors and plastered walls. So I do use a mesh system in my own house. My ISP provided a FritzBox AX router, so I bought matching FritzBox mesh repeaters. This means I can make the router Master, and the repeaters all slaves, so I can manage and monitor everything through the router management page. The mesh repeaters have an Ethernet socket, so in some locations (like my home office) I've got a network switch and some hard-wired networking. Most importantly, to my PC. Gives me a Gigabit connection to my router.

While I dislike that they're hiding a lot of stuff for the sake of user-friendlyness they still have a great ecosystem. E.g. my old 7490 still happily routes my 600mbps fiber connection. I reently added a used 7530AX as wifi repeater and the setup took all of 5 seconds (press button here, press button there, done).

Already for years VERY happy with our AVM Fritzbox-Meshed setup, 4 repeaters are all of the same brand only one not hardwired. We 'own' the local WiFi channels ;-)

You don't have to oversell it, it's a decent router from EU, but very limited, handholding and not very secure.  List of CVEs https://app.opencve.io/cve/?vendor=avm

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?

i had horrible experience with the axe5400. went to fritzbox, never looking back