The telcos and cable companies don't want to provision subscriber provided modems so they come up with the BS excuse about unsupported equipment to screw their customers over.

I have had good luck with that separation. I use an Apple Airport Extreme for my wifi (running in bridge mode), and a PC Engines "apu" [1] running OpenWRT for my router. I figure the wireless part is a detail I don't care too much about—it just gets my laptop onto the wired ethernet. The router is totally open source and hackable and I like that.

[1] http://pcengines.ch/apu1d.htm

> but my next upgrade will probably be a separate router and WiFi AP

Personally I go the "other" way. Router + WiFi (I use an Airport, but pick your poison), and then the most basic modem possible for the location - this might be a provider-supplied DOCSIS Modem/Router in bridge mode, right now it's a provider-supplied "1 port" ADSL2+ modem/router in bridge mode. With an ADSL setup, you'll probably need to use PPPoE from the router, with a DOCSIS setup, the auth is usually on the MAC address so your router doesn't need to know anything, it just connects via IP to the bridged cable modem.

If the modem ever gives me issues, I'll just replace it with a plain-jane ADSL2+ modem. If the ISP's expand their docsis/fibre network past our new house, I'll just swap the ADSL modem for a DOCSIS modem/router in bridge mode.

This setup has given me the least headaches in every scenario across several houses in both Australia and Thailand. The only hard part really has been trying to express "I want a DOCSIS router that i can turn off the router" in a way that a Thai-speaking technician or my non-technical english&thai speaking wife can all understand.