The annoyance of an (unconfigurable) router

I am currently sitting behind a router on this connection which is causing me quite a bit of annoyance.
I have the router suspected of messing up the connection now and then, last week I spend hours talking to tech support of our ISP until we finally got the problem nailed down to this *** router.
Now if I had access to this little little annoying box I could probably get on with solving the problems getting it set up so that it works as it should, but I don't have this access. That really is a quire annoying to put it mildly.
The same router is the reason that I am not able use my IP-phone because I can't get the right ports open.
Also I am not able to experiment with setting up servers, available from the internet.

Still routers are a good thing for many people, sitting on a NAT is pretty secure for people who just use the internet for surfing and other "normal user things", but I am not one of those that appreciates the router I am behind, especially not since I am not able to configure it myself.

Anyhow this is probably going to change in the near future, I guess that marks me as nerd that one of the things I look the most forward to by moving is to get my own public IP-address again.