They are turning off landlines in 2025!

[AnalogSteph]

Provider did make those settings available. Unfortunately they also publicly posted default logins for their devices, so chinese bots keep knocking on my firewall quite often. For the same reasons I would not like to open ports they use.

Huh? You don't have to open any ports on your network unless you want to use the router as a SIP gateway for IP phones. (Even then it's just a handful of well-defined ports.) Phone goes into router, router does all the VoIP PBX things. The VoIP traffic never goes through your firewall, which I assume sits behind the router.

And why would the default login thing be a problem, unless that always remains active even after you've set a password manually (which would be super dumb)?

 

[Offler]

Huh? You don't have to open any ports on your network unless you want to use the router as a SIP gateway for IP phones. (Even then it's just a handful of well-defined ports.) Phone goes into router, router does all the VoIP PBX things. The VoIP traffic never goes through your firewall, which I assume sits behind the router.

And why would the default login thing be a problem, unless that always remains active even after you've set a password manually (which would be super dumb)?

I dont want to use SIP gateway, but after I googled it a bit, my ISP/Phone provider does use them. So I was like "no, thank you,".

Mostly ISP installs modems/routers to people who are not skilled in IT. Those settings are available on internet in case someone wants to maintain modem/router at his home, but it rarely happens. People dont have any idea how to set these things up, so they sometimes remain on factory settings.

Firewall log report drops like 3 attack packets every minute, and at rate once per day there is an attempt for a remote access, apparently trying to use those credentials.

And it used to be worse, because a lot of devices in my IP range was in a botnet scanning everything around. Then it was 3 dropped packets every second.

Also some years ago I used to do raids in an online game. Somebody was seriously trying to DDoS my IP, they gave up when I restarted the line before every raid (dynamic IP).

 

[Blumlein 88]

Is that wireless I guess, from a cell tower?

Yes it is. You just get a fixed unit with different pricing for internet over the normal 5G network. With strong signals it can be quite speedy. Even with just good enough signals it isn't too bad. Prices are usually reasonable. Something around $50 to $80 a month for unlimited use.

 

[AnalogSteph]

I dont want to use SIP gateway, but after I googled it a bit, my ISP/Phone provider does use them. So I was like "no, thank you,".

Mostly ISP installs modems/routers to people who are not skilled in IT. Those settings are available on internet in case someone wants to maintain modem/router at his home, but it rarely happens. People dont have any idea how to set these things up, so they sometimes remain on factory settings.

Fortunately, even regular dumb users fully expect having a working telephone line (imagine that). At least they definitely do around these parts, and in many cases the existing phones to be accommodated are old POTS or even ISDN (which has always been more popular here than in other areas of the world). So the router will generally come with phone jacks to plug those into and should only require fairly minimal setup to tell it what sort of phone is connected and what number (out of the ones that are usually acquired automatically) is supposed to go to it. The specifics behind the scenes are officially Not Your Problem™, for better or worse. You can always buy one of the routers they sell to small businesses if you do want to mess with that. That's what I did (though it was more to accommodate ISDN telephony, which is a more common thing in businesses).

All this is doing is moving the VoIP to landline transition from the exchange to the customer. All the POTS equipment at your local exchange is likely to be 25 years old by this point and increasingly unreliable, and they'd like to get rid of it sooner rather than later. It makes a lot of sense to move that to the customer where the router is likely to be replaced about once in a decade anyway, and if that fails, there's just that one line affected.