"Routers wear out"

Earlier this evening an elderly friend mentioned he'd had to change his router last year. He had some problems with his internet connection and rang his ISP. In reply to my question as to why he changed, he said his recollection of the ISP conversation is "Clearly remember the guy on the phone saying, more or less, �Oh yes, routers wear out" - what word term did he use? Maybe �have to be replaced/ renewed� - like so many things"

Hmm

Unfortunately they do ...

Cheap components, not enough ventilation/heat sinking, components close to limits, and more.


Gone are the days when electronics was designed properly with all environmental and operational factors considered - it is just design something which "works", looks nice (ish), manufacture cheaply, do not test fully and ship out. All knowing that in 2 years time the customer will need to buy a new one.

I have recently learned that a system I designed and built in around 1985 has just been decommissioned - and it was running around 16 hours/day.

Generally it is capacitors issues, but a lot of the time it can also be 'fluff' to make people upgrade to the device that is now on the providers cribb sheet

In reply to a post by MHC:

Unfortunately they do ...

Cheap components, not enough ventilation/heat sinking, components close to limits, and more.

Gone are the days when electronics was designed properly with all environmental and operational factors considered - it is just design something which "works", looks nice (ish), manufacture cheaply, do not test fully and ship out. All knowing that in 2 years time the customer will need to buy a new one.

I'd call that failing, not wearing out.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Generally it is capacitors issues, but a lot of the time it can also be 'fluff' to make people upgrade to the device that is now on the providers cribb sheet

I could understand that but it wasn't the case. The ISP said to go out and buy a new one. So he got a Netgear which is doing very nicely thank you. Nothing to do with being supplied by the ISP.

They last about 2 years unless you get something quite expensive

The parts inside wear out from usage & it fails.

Nothing new here really.

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

The parts inside wear out from usage & it fails.

Only because domestic routers are designed down to a price, not up to a spec.

solid state electronics doesn't "wear out" but it does have a Mean Time to Failure.

They do wear out as does anything that does constant current switching.

Currently we have 450+ HP Procurve Gbe switchs. The port that has the most use fails and they fail more or less within weeks of each other based on the original install date as that same port on every switch shifts 70-80GB of data daily.

Routers will fail for the exact same reason - the more use it gets the more chance of it "wearing out". It's all switching but at minute level and it will wear out.

As stated though - capacitors are the main culprit. Qulity motherboard manufacturers soon learnt not to use cheap ones in the early noughties as failure rates went through the roof. Looking at you Abit.

Good grief!

My previous Netgear DG834 which is now 6 years old and still working as a diagnostic spare for friends must be well into pensionable age by now then. And my DG834GT, bought as I needed wireless, is well over 3 years old so must be well past middle age.

Netgear have served me well and, unless something happens to change my mind, will be my make of choice as and when I seek a replacement.

The router that had "worn out" was a D-link - don't know the model.

In reply to a post by yarwell:

solid state electronics doesn't "wear out" but it does have a Mean Time to Failure.

I disagree with this. The MTTF is "just" a statistic. Actually, if you was to look at the component in question, it does not just change from a state of 100% perfect to not working in a split second, something occurs leading up to this.

Of course in reality we do not have the equipment nor inclination to study all these electronics in such detail that we can see them degrading, hence we have MTTF and MTBF... Also these ratings (at least the disclosed ones) generally apply to a replacement part, not the individual components that make it up (of course that information gets passed on to the people who make the part... but they generally will not pass it on to the consumer when it comes to home routers)

I agree that "wear out" is not the appropriate term, and especially, the customer support reps should not be giving this nonsense information away but it draws a "reasonable" (but potentially misguided) parallel for the purposes of the consumer, and it is safe to say that by 10 years your router has probably "worn out" and something isn't working quite as well as it should have been.

I certainly see more and more cases with these cheapo routers going "haywire" and working partially and sporadically

Also, solid state disks do indeed demonstrate that things "wear out"!

Netgear is shocking equipment as far as I am concerned. I'd never recommend it to anyone. In that range, Linksys is a much much safer bet.

Yes 3 years of solid use, now it's had 3 years barely being used.
If it was kept in use it probably would have broken by the 4th year I reckon.

Routers never last long for me however I have 6 people using the connection here, with 6 laptops, all have phones, wireless printers, iPads, Sky box and then my neighbours (a 5 bedroom student house) chip in and share now. So I have at minimum around 13 devices connected but often above 20.

Using bog standard Sky router (does the job better than anything else I tried).

If there's only one or two devices using the device the time probably is far higher.

the MTTF is indeed a statistic, and things do indeed fail, but solid state electronics doesn't wear out in the sense of physical decay and finding a pile of iron filings or plastic debris under the offending part. It's simply the wrong word.

I'm always amused when I tell someone that something has failed and their response is "but it was working yesterday" to which I reply "that's what failure means, it was working and now it isn't".

Analogue versus digital versions of failure, is that in the analogue world it usually still worked to some extent before dying totally.

In reply to a post by cheshire_man:

Good grief!

My previous Netgear DG834 which is now 6 years old and still working as a diagnostic spare for friends must be well into pensionable age by now then. And my DG834GT, bought as I needed wireless, is well over 3 years old so must be well past middle age.

Netgear have served me well and, unless something happens to change my mind, will be my make of choice as and when I seek a replacement.

The router that had "worn out" was a D-link - don't know the model.

Same here - I too had two DG834GTs running for 5 years plus without issue.

I have to say all of the netgear routers I've had seem to run warm.

The Billion I'm now using is warm to the touch over one part but does appear to be better ventilated.