Plusnet say routers wear out....

My fathers sync speed has dropped from 2.2Mbps to 0.6 (again). BT are sending an engineer out to investigate, but I was most amused by the Customer Service chap who said "Routers wear out after 2 years and need to be replaced"

Surely if that were the case that most of the UK would be operating on a degraded connection...

It's worth posting that on the Plusnet Community forums if you haven't already. The guy needs "additional training". Like a rocket somewhere .

LOL. Maybe the mouse is worn out after running the wheel for years... ;P

I was having a conversation on facebook with AW from plusnet, so I've let him know. Generally PN support seems to be quite reasonable - they have sent out numerous BT engineers to fix line faults (sadly they don't fix them all, or the line is so dodgy it keeps making new faults on a weekly/monthly basis!)

Thankfully I've got a backup Vigor 120 at my Dads' so if we really needed to test this out, we could drop the 120 into place.

The thing is - they sort of do. Let me explain.

Not so much routers but modems anyway. Most modems (and by extension modem/routers) are built down to a price in the usual Chinese sweatshops. This means using the absolutely cheapest components they can get, and not worrying too much about good enclosure design.

Electrolytic capacitors, as used in the vast majority of consumer electronics, have a small amount of liquid electrolyte inside them. Normally they have a good lifespan but, if you heat them up, the liquid electrolyte gradually turns to vapour form and escapes, reducing the ability of the capacitor to do its job. Ever had a flat panel TV fail? Backlight wont come on, or the power LED just blinks at you? Its the electrolytic caps that have gradually failed.

Combine this with having your modem on 24 hours a day, in an enclosure that is probably not well ventilated so toasty warm inside, and electrolytic capacitor ageing is accelerated.

Having said all that though, 2 years is really pushing it. Lifespan should be around the 5 year mark, unless you have a particularly rogue component. Well designed equipment with good ventilation and 5p more spent on capacitors from a source other than MostGoodBangExcellentCapCompany can easily extend that lifespan.

I recently had my FTTC speed slide down a cliff - not in a big jump but in steps over a few weeks. PlusNet called BT out, BT man did the usual tests, proclaimed everything fine and left. He also reset the line. Tadaa, full speed back. My feeling is that some firmware in the cab/dslam/whatever has something like a memory leak bug and needs a reset now and then.

In reply to a post by mbames:

My fathers sync speed has dropped from 2.2Mbps to 0.6 (again). BT are sending an engineer out to investigate, but I was most amused by the Customer Service chap who said "Routers wear out after 2 years and need to be replaced"

Surely if that were the case that most of the UK would be operating on a degraded connection...

I agree and disagree with the statement made here. Most routers will last more than 2 years. That said, with most customers being on 12 or 18 month contracts, a large amount of customers will be negotiating and changing their package at the end of their contract, usually this comes with a new hub. I have definitely had a new hub at least every 2 years since I took out broadband. I doubt many customers have 4 year old routers for example.

I'd concur. Modem/routers (especially recent ones) seem to have a limited life as I've certainly seen them failing around the 5 year mark. Older Netgear models seem to be more robust than the newer ones. Strangely I've seen them partially. I have one where the ADSL2+ link will stay up - more or less - but none of the status/diagnostic interfaces work.

So I think the newer stuff is generally built down to a price and its wise to have a spare on hand (always useful in diagnosing problems too). It's a shame as I'm sure better quality components wouldn't increase the cost that much.

I've also noticed this issue with small switch-mode power supplies. They are often awful.

In reply to a post by Zad:

Combine this with having your modem on 24 hours a day, in an enclosure that is probably not well ventilated so toasty warm inside, and electrolytic capacitor ageing is accelerated.

Having said all that though, 2 years is really pushing it. Lifespan should be around the 5 year mark, unless you have a particularly rogue component. Well designed equipment with good ventilation and 5p more spent on capacitors from a source other than MostGoodBangExcellentCapCompany can easily extend that lifespan.

Full Draytek family so I'd hope their stuff might last a bit longer than some cheap imported tat, but who knows for sure?! Equipment at my parents is in a large cool, well ventilated room, so certainly shouldn't be getting too warm, but happy to take comments on board

I've been on the receiving end of the old "routers wear out and need replacing every year or so" comment several times over the years when reporting problems various. It's nothing new !

However, I have a Draytek 2600 sitting in the corner that's been running 24/7 from Nov 2002 to date. Just as cranky as it's always been it has to be said ... but definitely not significantly more so than it was when it first came out of the box all shiny, new and state-of-the-art :lol:

It really ought to have given up by now TBH as they do run pretty hot and electrolytics in particular don't much like that. But then there's an early Pentium (150 non-MMX I think) PC sat underneath it that's been running flat out 24/7 for much longer and apart from the occasional hoovering out, the only maintenance it's seen in it's entire life has been a new fan in the PSU.

Edited by ambrougham (Wed 01-Jun-16 00:21:55)

Years ago, in the days when PN didn't supply a "free" modem router you had to buy your own. They cost a fair bit back then so when mine started to go intermittent I opened it up and changed the electrolytics even though they weren't bulging. It then worked fine.

"Wall wart" power supplies can also have a short life. In the days of linear supplies I've sawed them open and replaced the reservoir electrolytic.Modern switchmode units aren't readily fixable.

As others have said it's the usual cheapo electrolytics problem. Though even good quality electrolytics used within their ratings and kept reasonably cool still have a relatively limited life compared to other parts. A few months ago I changed the power supply electrolytics in a very nice (and very expensive) 20" flat screen monitor which had gone a bit intermittent. It was 10 years old but well worth the effort.

I have to say that my experience is that routers and/or modems are the least reliable bits of kit in my house, to such an extent that I feel the need to have a spare in the cupboard at all times. All makes seem to have reliability issues, and my suspicion is that the modem is the most likely bit to fail. Over the last 15 years I have had a couple of separate modems fail and three or four router-modem combos fail. The last modem to fail was a Vigor 120 that had given good service. It failed a year or so ago and I replaced it with the 130 and got an instant 10% speed improvement. A few weeks later it automagically increased dramatically when they turned the FTTC on.

The other thing I have had to replace periodically is the filter. My current one is the BT Openreach Mk3 faceplate. I now get 75/18 at about 100 metres from the cabinet.

In reply to a post by Zad:

The thing is - they sort of do. Let me explain.

Yah. One of my Netgear hubs began to fail late last year. At first all I noticed was that very occasionally my Sky HD box complained about not having a network connection and my media player did the same thing. Both recovered with a reboot so I ignored it. Then my network music player started randomly not activating its screen saver when powered up. Again I ignored it.

Finally one day I tried to watch a ripped show and just couldn't. After swearing at the player, the server and TVersity I eventually looked at the hub. And it was sat there with the power LED flickering.

All in all I probably put up with odd behaviour from those devices for three or four months before the hub failed completely. I think that hub is about four years old. It's sat on a shelf with a reasonable amount of ventilation.

In my experience over the past 12 years or so, the first thing to pack up is the wireless side of the router. I've had 2 routers that still worked via ethernet but would not connect wirelessly and one which became unusable because the wireless was flakey,.
I've only had one router/modem that failed completely -just wouldn't boot at all..
All of the failed units were between 18 months and 4 years old.
My current TP-Link cheapy is coming up to 3 years old, so I'm currently looking around to find a best value replacement to have ready to go!!

In the past as a bench engineer working on Hifi, TV & Video I saw thousands of faults caused by various components usually the discrete ones. Integrated circuits (chips, lsi, cpu) rarely had faults in comparison to say capacitors and transistors. But in most cases the item would be brought in for a specific fault and that is where it differs from "wearing out". If say an electrolytic capacitor leaks after venting it will change value and that will usually present itself as a specfic fault with the unit.

The only modern way it may not be quite so obvious is where a mains power adapter is no longer providing a smooth supply. But that could result in say a modem resetting etc.
The notion of a device becoming less effective than say when it was new in the electronics world is a very fine line in my experience. It really is a situation of either it works or it doesn't. Intermittent faults with say a router would likely manifest themselves in an obvious way, certainly when compared to other electronics.

The notion of a device becoming less effective than say when it was new in the electronics world is a very fine line in my experience. It really is a situation of either it works or it doesn't. Intermittent faults with say a router would likely manifest themselves in an obvious way, certainly when compared to other electronics.

I think the notion of it becoming "less effective" is very relevant to home routers. This is because in my experience the built in modem is often the first thing to fail. This does not manifest itself as the wireless dropping connection etc, it just manifests itself as say the connection syncing at a slower speed or odd behaviours such as random ping spikes which you only detect with 24/7 monitoring. Often this goes unnoticed by the average Joe Bloggs who just assumes the ISP is rubbish.

So yes, in my experience, home routers often become less effective due to faults.

Just to chip in, I have never owned a modem router that has lasted beyond 3 years. I do use ISP supplied equipment generally and I have a tonne of devices connected.

Out of every electronic device the thing that gets feels it is changed the most is my router.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Wed 01-Jun-16 21:04:36)

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

The notion of a device becoming less effective than say when it was new in the electronics world is a very fine line in my experience. It really is a situation of either it works or it doesn't. Intermittent faults with say a router would likely manifest themselves in an obvious way, certainly when compared to other electronics.

I think the notion of it becoming "less effective" is very relevant to home routers. This is because in my experience the built in modem is often the first thing to fail. This does not manifest itself as the wireless dropping connection etc, it just manifests itself as say the connection syncing at a slower speed or odd behaviours such as random ping spikes which you only detect with 24/7 monitoring. Often this goes unnoticed by the average Joe Bloggs who just assumes the ISP is rubbish.

So yes, in my experience, home routers often become less effective due to faults.

Just to chip in, I have never owned a modem router that has lasted beyond 3 years. I do use ISP supplied equipment generally and I have a tonne of devices connected.

Out of every electronic device the thing that gets feels it is changed the most is my router.

Perhaps you suffer from more brown outs than the national average. Or as I mentioned above it's not the modem/router itself that becomes faulty but the mains power adapter/brick that's generating unwanted noise through say a faulty component, such as an elecrolytic capacitor thats changed value.

I've had modems for years running on the same line without issue. I'd suggest that an idea if you wish to experiment is simply to get a replacement power adapter to try when issues start to appear.

Most my items are surge protected or in the case of real protection I have a line conditioner that usually starts to indicate activity at around the time I hear thunder. Usually Brown Outs are happening elsewhere indicated by the thunder in the distance and the Line Conditioner will ramp up or down its auto transformer to keep a steady output.

Highly doubt I am experiencing brown outs, I live zone 2, relatively central in London but who knows. I have not had a power outage in over 5 years, never have a light dim or flicker, and wiring isn't in a bad condition.

Good shout on the power adapter, I've never tested them out, I just replace the whole unit.

Since I use ISP supplied kit, I generally do not pay for the replacements so it does not bother me too much.

I think my real issue is I have a minimum of 10 connected devices, usually 20+ all over WiFi, usage on these devices is quite heavy e.g. Sky HD box downloading 1080P movies etc, Apple TV (1080P netflix), 4K netflix to smart TV etc. I am honestly surprised the routers last as long as they do given our level of usage. Also my house is usually quite warm. It's also not uncommon for me to keep a router on for 200+ days without a reboot.

In reply to a post by mbames:

My fathers sync speed has dropped from 2.2Mbps to 0.6 (again). BT are sending an engineer out to investigate, but I was most amused by the Customer Service chap who said "Routers wear out after 2 years and need to be replaced"

Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Nice one. Someone tell them it isn't April 1st.

In reply to a post by Zad:

Having said all that though, 2 years is really pushing it. Lifespan should be around the 5 year mark, unless you have a particularly rogue component. Well designed equipment with good ventilation and 5p more spent on capacitors from a source other than MostGoodBangExcellentCapCompany can easily extend that lifespan.

Snipping the rest of your informative post, and whilst I equally understand the points you raise, the last bit is most relevant. Certainly in 2 years, you would not expect any such fault to be there. The most common problem I've seen has been failure of the power supplies.

The most common kit to have power supply issues is Draytek in my experience. I'm sure some poor quality kit does exist that does suffer fatigue at an early point, but to suggest that a router "wears out" after 2 year Is ridiculous and downright misleading, although I'm sure the Netgear's of the world would love that to be the case.

Have Plusnet moved their support to the 3rd world then?

Lancashire?

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

Have Plusnet moved their support to the 3rd world then?

Must admit it sounds like something that BT or HORRANGE Customer Services would say!!