I have to use MS Windows and their office suite daily at work. I can certify they’re crap. And it has been getting worse since 11.

You don’t say which modem you mean, but from context it seems to be xDSL. I’m running an own cable modem (Vodafone in Germany) which works a lot better than Vodafone’s own POS (which insists to reboot itself every day or two despite being in bridge mode). There is a thin client running opnsense behind it.

As to picking the smallest and lowest power, I think it is better to pick one that works best. When I used DSL I bought a cheap hackable DSL modem from an italian ISP and put OpenWRT on it. It also ran in bridge mode. It had an SFP slot which can come handy for galvanic separation, but I didn’t bother with it.

To hell. In a handbasket.