network question - is this unusual?

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Fri, Jun 05, 2009 at 15:29:30 +0100,
  Anne Wilson <annew at kde.org> wrote:
> I see. So I need to find out whether my daughter's BT router (with a single 
> connection socket) contains a firewall or not.
> 
> I would have preferred to get rid of it, but it seems to be tied in - they 
> don't allow you access to any settings whatsoever, as far as I can see, so 
> you can't just replace it with a standard router.

It's nice to have a device you own (in two senses) separate from the equipment
provided to you by your ISP. One is that for some definitions of fun, it is
fun to set up traffic shaping on your device. You usually aren't supposed to
muck with the ISP provided equipment and you need all traffic going through a
single device to do this well. You can also have a firewall there in addition
to that on each machine to mitigate the damage done if a machine is
compromised. And you can keep your ISP from seeing your local traffic. (The
FBI wants to be able to directly connect to routers in order to be able to
see traffic that wouldn't normally be propagated to a place they could
monitor without drawing attention. The project was called private doorbell.
Cisco denied cooperating with that project way back when, but times change
and I'm sure the wish is still there.)