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.