AVM - FRITZ!Box 7690

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).

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

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

Used quite a bit by regional ISPs in Ireland

These things are solid. I've been using them for 10 years... Before with copper and now fibre. Never had an issue.

Maybe they send the good ones to Switzerland 😂

I have been using FRITZ!Boxes for 20 years without any issue. Also running FRITZ! smart home stuff, no issues as well.