What good off the shelf solutions are out there? Should one buy the high end
d-link/linksys/netgear products? I've had bad experiences with those (netgear in particular).
Should one get a "real" cisco router?
IMHO, you should look to Japan, Korea and China for suppliers. Even if you are small, you may be pleasantly surprised at the response from a Chinese manufacturer. If you specify a box with Linux-based firmware, then the manufacturer has low design costs, and can ammortise them across many customers because that Linux build can be used again and again. The easiest way to spec it is to find an existing DSL CPE that is based around Linux and ask them how much to make noname boxes for you so that you can put your own sticker on. Better yet, form a buying club with folks that you meet at the next NANOG BOF and you are certain to get decent responses.
Is there a market for a new breed of CPE running OpenWRT or pfsense on hardware with enough CPU/RAM to not fall over?
Such CPE has been available for years which is why OpenWRT was created in the first place. I believe OpenWRT has limited DSL drivers?
Granted that won't cost $79.00 at best buy. However it seems to me that decent CPE is going to run a couple hundred dollars in order to have sufficient ram/cpu.
Ignore BestBuy prices. You don't know their margin and it WILL vary product to product. With a bit of web searching I found a 5 yr old device, Netcomm NB5 ADSL modem/router that runs Linux and retails for $99 Australian.
What are folks here running in SOHO environments that doesn't require too frequent oil changes :)
Ignore what people tell you. Go talk to Chinese manufacturers and explain what you need. You are doing them a favor by providing free market data to them so that they begin to understand that there is an ISP market that wants DSL routers that are Linux based, flexible, support IPv6, and can be branded by the ISP. Fact is, that all those name brand boxes at BestBuy also come from Chinese manufacturers anyway. The brand name companies are middlemen that provide specs, some design work, and checking manufacturing quality. The only tricky part of the equation is manufacturing quality, but why not copy the ISP pioneers of the 1990s. They did not do extensive trials and evaluations of routers and switches. Instead, they found out what the early entrants were using and bought the same stuff. So do some digging to find out what Chinese factories are building kit for Billionton, Netgear and all the rest. --Michael Dillon