The malware argument is a bit weak

It’s much more than just a bit weak, unless you are somehow continuously monitoring it, so yeah, in most end-user scenarios, it would hardly make a difference to keep it on, even if there were no updates.

Not illegal, but the ISPs are seemingly under no obligation to give you those details. In Germany, there’s the “freedom of routers” embedded in the telco law. So they HAVE to give you everything you need to get your custom router online via their wire/fibre.

OIC, so, same as here. Germany seems to be having pretty well made laws in these cases.

Bridge mode is just using the ISPs router and bridge that into your router. It’s not the same - you still need the ISP’s access device instead of just yours.

Except that it is a layer 2 bridge and I couldn’t connect to the network directly, either way, because their line is copper ^[1] and consumer routers/modems are usually RJ45/RJ11.

you’re not supposed to get this kind of information from your ISP

Wait, do you mean, it’s illegal to ask for it?
In my case, it just depends upon the ISP’s policy.

In fact, with the current ISP, even though they provide their on modem (copper line), it has a pure bridge mode available, which I can connect to my other router and have fun looking at those packets with full transparency and the tech even went ahead and explained to me what I messed up, before resetting the modem for me, when I did use the bridge mode.

Read the title and went: What? They want you to keep your network hardware ON, when unattended, to increase the undetected malware entry opportunities?

Turns out it as their own devices they wanted to push updates to.

I would really prefer to use my own device though and even better, configure it myself after learning how the ISP’s network works. But convenience is what it is.

Wise Mac users move to Antarctica to prolong the life of the badly cooled devices.