indication lights on routers

What is it with router these days having less indication lights? Routers from providers like Plusnet have one light on the front and that is it and even routers from companies like TP-link only have a couple. My old TP link have a load of them, including lights to tell me an Ethernet connection is working. Seems to be going backwards.,

Yes, I’ve noticed the same thing - definitely a trend with several ISP provided routers (eg Virgin Media). I wonder why.

Edited by kam67 (Tue 27-Dec-22 02:09:11)

Hi,

IMHO, I think this is so that the router draws slightly less power. Every light requires a small draw on the mains. Newer routers are suppose to be more carbon neutral...

HTH,

In reply to a post by kam67:

Yes, I’ve noticed the same thing - definitely a trend with several ISP provided routers (eg Virgin Media). I wonder why.

Built to a price.

In reply to a post by mking90031:

Hi,

IMHO, I think this is so that the router draws slightly less power. Every light requires a small draw on the mains. Newer routers are suppose to be more carbon neutral...

HTH,

While I don't use BT routers, I would think the bloatware they stick in their routers will take more energy and that seems to be the trend with a of routers provided by ISPs these days, too much bloat and very little control available to the end user.

I had a Zyxel sent to me by Plusnet a while ago as their own hub did not work on my connection, i thought it was a normal Zyxel with its own firmware, but no, it looks like a normal Zyxel, but it has been modified, can't use the VoIP ports. Not that it matters now as the Zyxel died, which is why I am back with the old hub 2 at the moment.

I don't think it has anything to do saving energy, but more to do with giving the consumer less info, but according to BT and others, it makes the routers fit into a house decor instead of looking like an industrial thing.

It is not just routers from providers, even ones I have been looking at online to buy have limited LEDs, If say my TV stops connecting, I would just love to be able to look at the front of my router to see if the cable is still connected, i got to get new Ethernet cables, some of the ones I have got are old, so the clip is broken, and sometimes they To be honest I did think about going for a fibre network, but it is not worth it as I have nothing here that works beyond a 1Gbit Ethernet connection. I did think about connecting a USB NIC of 2.5Gbits to my nas and a new card in the computer, but I don't think it will be worth it,l also the network switches would have to be changed

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by kam67:

Yes, I’ve noticed the same thing - definitely a trend with several ISP provided routers (eg Virgin Media). I wonder why.

Built to a price.

But even the ones I can buy seems to be the same and some of them are pretty expensive

Consumers judge the performance of their internet service largely on whether the Wi-Fi reaches all over their house, routers that don't glow like the Las Vegas strip and don't look like an HR Giger sculpture are more likely to be positioned out in the open, helping achieve this Wi-Fi coverage goal.

It is simply marketing. People expect to see a fancy light piped glow of light like they are conditioned to see on their smart speakers rather than the more utilitarian harsh row of randomly flashing LEDs that would be more practical for troubleshooting. Now you have to try and work out if the glowing ring is orange or red, purple or blue, green or yellow, flashing twice in one second or three times a second then looking up the help guide to see what it means!

It has nothing to do with power consumption as the LEDs with a light pipe indicator will need to draw as much power or more power to illuminate the much larger area. Often the LEDs are over driven so they don't need so many (cheaper to make) and they dim over a few years as they burn out, but by then the ISP has sold you another contract with "our best ever Wi-Fi" router.

In reply to a post by jpm:

Consumers judge the performance of their internet service largely on whether the Wi-Fi reaches all over their house, routers that don't glow like the Las Vegas strip and don't look like an HR Giger sculpture are more likely to be positioned out in the open, helping achieve this Wi-Fi coverage goal.

I am not your average consumer, for a start I tend not to use Wi-Fi unless I really have to, Everything I can connect to Ethernet I do, even my printer which can run via Wi-fi as well I connect to Ethernet, not so much for speed as it is not needed even for a laser printer, but for reliability, I have had issues with wi-fi on printers before, so that is why when I went for a new printer, I got the middle model to get ethernet and duplex printing.
The only stuff I have on WIFI is my Echo dots, Blink cameras, doorbell camera and my switch bot hub, only because they can't be connected to ethernet sadly. Even so, most of these use 2.4Ghz Wi-fi whch in my opinion is far better than 5ghz. Oh my mobile phone and ereader use Wi-fi.

I found my old TPlink Wr1043 router, I am off work tomorrow, so I may put it back into action.

In reply to a post by E300:

It is simply marketing. People expect to see a fancy light piped glow of light like they are conditioned to see on their smart speakers rather than the more utilitarian harsh row of randomly flashing LEDs that would be more practical for troubleshooting. Now you have to try and work out if the glowing ring is orange or red, purple or blue, green or yellow, flashing twice in one second or three times a second then looking up the help guide to see what it means!

the problem is with all these colours, it don't help those of us who are colour blind, I can tell the difference between green and red if they are close to each other, but not separate.
i have to use colour tables when video editing to make sure I get the right colours

It has nothing to do with power consumption as the LEDs with a light pipe indicator will need to draw as much power or more power to illuminate the much larger area. Often the LEDs are over driven so they don't need so many (cheaper to make) and they dim over a few years as they burn out, but by then the ISP has sold you another contract with "our best ever Wi-Fi" router.

You are right about LEDs burning out, I know someone with an old BT hub and the LEDs have failed on that, which suits them as they are the opposite of me and hate LEDs. They are chaging over to Zzoomm soon so they will get a router from them. My old Tp link have ten LEDs on the front, I notice newer ones have a lot less.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

While I don't use BT routers, I would think the bloatware they stick in their routers will take more energy and that seems to be the trend with a of routers provided by ISPs these days, too much bloat and very little control available to the end user.

There's a built in Samknows Speed Test (which is far from unique to BT) that uses zero resources unless you're running a test. It's an OFCOM requirement to ensure they actually achieve their advertised speeds (it's either that or give out hundreds/thousands of samknows whiteboxes).
I actually think a speed tester built in to the router is an excellent addition.

What do you consider "bloatware" that BT put in their routers?

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

There's a built in Samknows Speed Test (which is far from unique to BT) that uses zero resources unless you're running a test. It's an OFCOM requirement to ensure they actually achieve their advertised speeds (it's either that or give out hundreds/thousands of samknows whiteboxes).
I actually think a speed tester built in to the router is an excellent addition.

What do you consider "bloatware" that BT put in their routers?

A built-in speed test on BT routers? I have not touched a BT router for a long time, they were bloated then, more bloated now by the seems of it due to their support for BT mesh.

I tried to put my old TP link in line today, I thought it was working fine until I noticed my radiator controller was not connecting, nor was my blink cameras. Furthermore, I tried and tried and in the end I gave up, I think it may be the limit of Wi-fi devices the router can cope with, it is over 10 years old after all, such a sham. I need to sort out my network and the electric cables in this house, too many and in too many extension sockets, not sure I can do anything about it, but at least I can tidy them up a bit. I am work for a week in a few weeks time, I will try and sort it out them, hopefully I will feel better and have got rid of this flipping bug.

I think I may look for a better router or even go for the idea I had a few weeks ago, make my own. They all seem to look awful now, take a look at thisTP-link one. What on earth is that block for on the top? I presume it must be a heat sink, but it comes to something when a router needs a heat sink to keep cool of that size.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

You are right about LEDs burning out, I know someone with an old BT hub and the LEDs have failed on that, which suits them as they are the opposite of me and hate LEDs. They are chaging over to Zzoomm soon so they will get a router from them. My old Tp link have ten LEDs on the front, I notice newer ones have a lot less.

It's quite hard to burn out an LED unless you are driving them well out of spec and that is completely unnecessary for indicator LED's, Typically the lifetime would be measured in millions if not billions of hours. Other components are more like to fail first. Exceptions are early blue and white LED's as well as all UV LED's as these have significantly shorter lifespans. They are also more expensive. Personally I have never seen an indicator LED "burn out", and there are thousands of them on the servers at work. LED bulbs fail, but that's 99% of the time the finest Chinesium electrolytic capacitors in them. The LED's themselves are fine.

For the record the power consumption of an indicator LED that is red/green/orange/yellow is typically measured in fractions of a mW. White and blue draw a bit more and might put the power consumption on a router at todays prices up by 10p for a year if lucky over the red/green/orange/yellow option.

50,000 hours tend to be the normal lifespan of LEDs down to around 70% of their original light output, and as they age they slowly dim.

LEDs on network switches and servers etc tend to be viewed directly, they are often running at much lower currents than their rated maximums as they don't need to be at their maximum brightness. The trouble comes more with consumer kit where they use light pipes to get a nice ring of diffused light, because a lot of light gets lost, and a single LED has to cover a large area and still be bright, they will use higher flux SMD LEDs and run them at their rated currents, and often over drive them because they don't make consumer kit to last for more than a year or two. These LEDs also run quite hot and unless they have additional heatsinking (which they will not have in consumer kit) their lifespan is reduced.

My Philips Hue bridge the LEDs on it are very dim now after 4 years of 24/7 usage, same with a Wi-Fi accesspoint, it had a single blue LED which was being over driven in order to create a ring of light via a light pipe, that was noticeably dimmer after just 12 months!

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

There's a built in Samknows Speed Test (which is far from unique to BT) that uses zero resources unless you're running a test. It's an OFCOM requirement to ensure they actually achieve their advertised speeds (it's either that or give out hundreds/thousands of samknows whiteboxes).
I actually think a speed tester built in to the router is an excellent addition.

What do you consider "bloatware" that BT put in their routers?

A built-in speed test on BT routers? I have not touched a BT router for a long time, they were bloated then, more bloated now by the seems of it due to their support for BT mesh.

How on earth does support for a mesh Wi-Fi product qualify as bloat?

In reply to a post by jpm:

How on earth does support for a mesh Wi-Fi product qualify as bloat?

Depends how you define "bloat".

For some, it just means far too many features that may have been added one by one over time that they (and possibly most users) will never need but can't get rid of. Even if they don't affect overall performance.

I don't know about BT routers (never used one), but there's no great shortage of that sort of software

In reply to a post by billford:

For some, it just means far too many features that may have been added one by one over time that they (and possibly most users) will never need but can't get rid of. Even if they don't affect overall performance.

The obsession with 'bloat' in technology really implies nobody understands that code not enabled is not executed, and that storage is radically cheap (and fast) in 2022 than it was in 1982. We could all go back to the Sinclair ZX81 with limited function and 1K of RAM but that would be quite boring.

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

It's quite hard to burn out an LED unless you are driving them well out of spec and that is completely unnecessary for indicator LED's, Typically the lifetime would be measured in millions if not billions of hours. Other components are more like to fail first. Exceptions are early blue and white LED's as well as all UV LED's as these have significantly shorter lifespans. They are also more expensive. Personally I have never seen an indicator LED "burn out", and there are thousands of them on the servers at work. LED bulbs fail, but that's 99% of the time the finest Chinesium electrolytic capacitors in them. The LED's themselves are fine.

Yes, I realise it is hard to burn out a LED, but if they are over driven they can burn out.

For the record the power consumption of an indicator LED that is red/green/orange/yellow is typically measured in fractions of a mW. White and blue draw a bit more and might put the power consumption on a router at todays prices up by 10p for a year if lucky over the red/green/orange/yellow option.

I also know that LED don't use a lotof energy, hardly anything, but then I never said they did., What I said is that someone was happy not to have LEDs , nothing to do with energy,

In reply to a post by jpm:

How on earth does support for a mesh Wi-Fi product qualify as bloat?

More code for the router to run , so more memory, faster processors, so more energy

In reply to a post by jchamier:

The obsession with 'bloat' in technology really implies nobody understands that code not enabled is not executed, and that storage is radically cheap (and fast) in 2022 than it was in 1982. We could all go back to the Sinclair ZX81 with limited function and 1K of RAM but that would be quite boring.

Modern processors are more efficient and a lot faster than the old Z80 CPU that the ZX81 used to have, the problem is the more you stick into a router the more power the processor is needed to run it and more memory, so more energy, this is why a lot of modern routers get pretty warm these days.,
I have to admit it have been a while since I have dived into a BT hub, but the last time they had something called a smart Wifi, which to be honest was more of a pain in the neck than smart and it is not required.
I have the Plusnet hub 1 which is the same as one of the older BT hubs and the difference in firmware is amazing, the plusnet one is far better, could do with a bit more control, but BT routers give you even less.
I would love to know how much more energy the BT router takes compared to the Plusnet one.

I also know that LED don't use a lotof energy, hardly anything, but then I never said they did.

But someone else did.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

Modern processors are more efficient and a lot faster than the old Z80 CPU that the ZX81 used to have, the problem is the more you stick into a router the more power the processor is needed to run it and more memory, so more energy, this is why a lot of modern routers get pretty warm these days.,

What? More code doesn't mean you need to run faster. More concurrent code MIGHT need a faster processor, or you can use a cheaper processor. The main reason for new/faster processors and heat is the faster lines, everyone isn't on 512kbps ADSL anymore.

I have the Plusnet hub 1 which is the same as one of the older BT hubs and the difference in firmware is amazing, the plusnet one is far better, could do with a bit more control, but BT routers give you even less.

Many posts elsewhere on TBB say the BT routers give you more control than the Plusnet hub1 (or hub 2).

I would love to know how much more energy the BT router takes compared to the Plusnet one.

It will be on the rating plate of the unit. Don't look on the PSU.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

What? More code doesn't mean you need to run faster. More concurrent code MIGHT need a faster processor, or you can use a cheaper processor. The main reason for new/faster processors and heat is the faster lines, everyone isn't on 512kbps ADSL anymore.

Yeah, I realise that faster speeds need faster processors and I also realise that processors only boost when they need to, so only use more energy when they are being used a lot.

Many posts elsewhere on TBB say the BT routers give you more control than the Plusnet hub1 (or hub 2).

The control on the plusnet hub is pretty basic, but what I meant is the amount of rubbish it doesn't have compared to Bt hubs, but even BT hubs don't have that much control. What I liked about the Zyxel Plusnet gave me and my old TP link router is the ability to name every device that was connected to the router., which can also be done with the Plusnet router to some degree. I still hate the smart wifi in the BT hubs.

It will be on the rating plate of the unit. Don't look on the PSU.

I know that. but I don't have a modern BT router. I think next year I may look at getting a better router, I did look at the TP link Deco, the mesh ones, but not enough ethernet ports on them I would have to use a switch. Also, i don't really need a mesh system, as the Wi-fi in this house is fine. But it was just a thought.