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Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 22, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Hah, (some of) the ISPs are way ahead of you. We'll lease you a router for $10 a month where the only available settings are SSID, password, port forwarding, and a UPnP toggle switch (thankfully off by default). Management is cloud-based (no local GUI) and updates are automatic. People HATE the lack of setting availability, and I don't blame them for it. Can't change the subnet from the default 192.168.1.1/24, and no we cannot override it in tech support, we have the same options as those available to the end user.

The company line is to buy your own router if you need access to other settings, but that's about to become a lot harder.

At the same time, this is probably Good For The Normies overall from a security standpoint.

The company line is to buy your own router if you need access to other settings, but that's about to become a lot harder.

Me using OPNsense on commodity hardware with an Intel NIC PCI-e card

I actually use UPnP because it makes building direct-connect tunnels over tailscale easier (and my ISP offers symmetrical fiber, but no IPv6, riddle me that), but I monitor it and have some restrictions in place. Most users shouldn't use it though.

Actually my ISP puts IPoE on a VLAN, but none of their techs know anything about it and I had to reverse-engineer it using reddit. Their loaned-out gateway (which is bundled in the price, apparently?) can give you a WAN link for your own router on VLAN 1, but that's another device you have to put in the path. Maybe breaking up Ma Bell wasn't such a good idea, they at least had "One Policy, One System, Universal Service" instead of the hodgepodge of nonsense that passes for telecommunications in this country.

My girlfriend's ISP-provided router let me change the subnet, but not the DNS IPs distributed by DHCP, weirdly enough, and they're locked to the default ISP DNS. (She at least gets v6 though, God Bless American Telephone & Telecom.) I could go through the effort to run a DHCP server on her network, but I'm really only freeloading on her network for my backup server, so I just gave all my devices their own manual DNS servers set to my preference and we're good to go.

Well, at least your American Intel hardware is safe from this regulation.

If you think that ipv6 arrangement is weird, ours is weirder. Ipv6 is bog standard for our residential service but completely and utterly unsupported and undocumented for business class service (which is what I support and does run on separate infrastructure for the relevant parts). All I can say is try /56 and if that doesn't work try /64. They give us nothing as far as docs go and implementation varies by region. Certain areas still don't have it at all. This may be intentional so they can upsell ipv6-ready enterprise DIA/FIA, but it's probably more corporate incompetence/fragmentation (we are made up of many dozens of independent cable systems bought out over the years after all) than anything else. Officially, we cannot offer any assistance for ipv6 on business class connections. Most of my coworkers barely know what it is, and I'm embarrassingly rusty on it myself.

We can set custom DNS on our provided CPE though, at least.