Was rather shocked to find BT hubs don’t allow you to change DNS servers anymore and force you to use their own ones, so I can’t properly setup adguard.
What routers are people using now that are reliable and will let me control my own network configuration
Old computer, or Raspberry pi with proxmox and pfsense on it. The positive thing is that you can run other servers as well (pi-hole for example for network wide blocking ads)
If you’re using pfSense anyway, pfBlockerNG provides the same AD related DNS sinkhole functionality of pi-hole without the need for a whole separate machine/VM to manage.
You could also use OpnSense and install AdGuard Home on that.
I’ve been relying on pfSense for around a decade.
I’m guessing I would need to get a modem too then, no? I’ve got the BT router that takes the DSL connection directly currently
You should check if you can put your BT router in bridge mode.
This is typically how we used to configure these kinds of setups. This should allow the router you place incide the BT router to get your “outside” IP.
I don’t know if BT has any limitations on this, though, but it has worked with all ISP’s where I am located.