Hi Fibrejay, my opinion on the matter is split by two factors.
1 - BT has to support a massed marketplace, residential and business. To that end, they make the devices as plug and play as possible, and as remotely supportable as possible. They therefore specifically limit the complexity of the installation and the options available to the user to prevent BT from getting blamed for 'sunburns' and 'misconfigurations'. The net end result is the user interface on all the Hubs is severly limited in its functionality and is effectively designed to be a zero configuration setup. BT have my complete understanding on this as it is impossible to be the IT support helpdesk to millions of end users, of which most lack the skills or knowledge required to triage or remedy their own problems. So, we should always reasonably expect the consumer user interface to be very limited and to be fit for purpose 99% of the time.
2 - If you need deep configuration capabilities over your WAN and LAN then you are free to supply your own Router and BT do not restrict this, nor do they map the user credentials to the MAC address of a specific device. If your business requires deep config of the LAN, VPN, DHCP, DHCPv6, VPN, NTP, DNS, Firewall rules, enhanced logging, intrusion detection, SNMP, IGMP, or even to act as your own PPPoE Service, make a captive portal for guests, rate limiting, traffic shaping, VLANs and much more then you'll need to provide your own kit that surfaces all of these items so you can configure your WAN and LAN to taste.
It is my less than humble opinion that if you need anything that cannot be satisfied by the base user interface on any BT supplied HUB router then you will be rolling your own. But, I absolutely understand why BT ships dumbed down devices. Simply put, if they didn't they have a massive IT helpdesk problem and have to charge consumers way more for the monthly subscription to cover the costs of repairing and fixing user created issues.
So, this isn't really a question of Smart Hub 1, or Smart Hub 3; they are all extremely limited in functionality, but it is by design.
