said by yyzlhr: Consumer grade routers did not exist and customers hooked up a hub to their modem and paid Rogers for multiple IP addresses
Nonsense. Consumer grade routers were available certainly around in 2001 when I bought one and before that Windows had this neat capability called ICS (Internet Connection Sharing) ... a 2nd LAN card and you were good to go and with a hub, you could connect several computers. Wireless routers were rather more rare though.
Certainly since it became rogers.com after @home went bye bye in 2002, and LANcity and Motorola wave modems and Terayon modems were still around, you could get consumer routers. I have a bricked Netgear purchased around then.
What this really comes down to is exclusivity deals that Rogers signs with the manufacturers to get the best prices they can for the units they pick. When the exclusivity deal expires they move on to the next one.