Super Hub - leave on 24/7 or turn off?

I always turn my Super Hub off when I'm not using it. Is there any advantage in leaving it on all the time?

It's more likely to catch fire if you leave it on which will give you the opportunity to replace it with a more accomplished device.

Seriously though, whichever you feel happier with. FWIW I find these kind of devices are more likely to fail if switched on/off regularly than if left on constantly. For that reason most of my kit stays on.

I switch my router off overnight (not a superhub though as I'm not with Virgin). People do sort of assume that switching on/off is more likely to make kit fail. I wonder if that assumption is correct for modern electronics. It may just be a memory throwback to when electronic devices had thermionic valves .

Mine's on 24x7 partly because I have a VOIP phone. The savings from using VOIP rather than VM for telephony considerably outweigh any saving from turning it on and off.

In reply to a post by john2007:

I switch my router off overnight (not a superhub though as I'm not with Virgin). People do sort of assume that switching on/off is more likely to make kit fail. I wonder if that assumption is correct for modern electronics. It may just be a memory throwback to when electronic devices had thermionic valves .

In my own experience switching them on and off a router increases chances of it's config getting corrupted (so it needs to be reconfigured), so by turning it off every night you might be increasing the chance of this happening by 100 times or so.

One of my friends turns his router off at night to save electricity and is on his 5th one in 3 years as they keep mysteriously failing, but then again he does buy belkin and netgear so that might also be something to do with it.

I have never had any problems with the secondhand Netgear DG834Gv3 I've been using for years.

eta: secondhand

Edited by deleted (Sun 24-Jul-11 14:46:17)

I was getting low readings on my superhub and unable to log on to the hub.
VM advised me to turn off my hub for 10 seconds as I had had it continuosly running for 74 days.

Speed now 50.xx MB and now able to access hub.

That's because the Superhub firmware is riddled with bugs.

Although modern electronic equipment seldom contains thermionic valves (or tubes across the Atlantic) which were prone particularly to their (cathode) heaters burning out similar to typical tungsten lamps, the majority has Switching Power Supply units built in, or in the lighter-weight external, non-transformer, mains adaptors.

When the device is switched on manually by the user, the working DC Voltage level is achieved by switching the 240 V Mains supply on and off rapidly (many times per cycle), almost continuously for varying periods, so that the DC Voltage on the load supply rises to then hovers around the required working level.

Also the User Swich-On can be at the rhe peak of the mains wave-form at 1.414 times the nominal 240 V RMS (= about 340 V; and the mains supply in our area has been as high as 260 V RMS so almost 370 V instantaneous), or could be at about 0 V (ideally) as the mains waveform transits between the positive and negative peaks of the sinusoidal waveform. Or at any voltage in between, following the sinusoidal waveform.

So there can be quite a lot of electrical "noise" generated at varying values and frequencies.

This noise could simply "swamp" some of the settings; or even on very exceptional occasions, generate apparent instructions etc.

At an extreme, the noise could actually "burn out" or physically destroy the semi-conductor circuits.


So electrically/electronically it is generally better to leave the devices switched on.


However, it is occasionally necessary to swich them off for say about a minute, so that a clean start is made on the settings or even to update them.

Some of you may be aware of having to do this with Sky Boxes and the like; or defragging a hard disk etc. Defragging can physically harm the typical HDD, so should not be done very often; but is recommended on a periodic basis.


On the saving of electricity aspect, all of the power "used" by the devices ends up as heat; and as generally some degree of home-space heationg is required in the UK throughout the year, theoretically the direct heating-only use of electricity and/or gas etc, will be reduced.

And this device-sourced heat will effectively been recycled, ie used twice, firstly in its intended use for computing etc; and secondly for house-warming.

Where-as the direct heating-only consumption for central-heating will have only been used once.

Away back over half-a-century, we heated our electronic research labs by switching the equipment under test ON "first thing", as the central heating system was unable to bring the ambient temperature up to a reasonable level - so we both tested the equipment and created comfortable working conditions from the single source and "recycled" the enrgy, to use today's terminology.


As reported by another forum member, I wonder how much energy etc was taken up by scrapping four devices; and now using a fifth, apparently caused by frequent user-switching to save small amounts of energy?

And were any of the four failed devices stripped down and recycled in any way?

But a device that is never switched on will have a much longer lifespan...

To be honest, if sensible then either way is fine

1. Don't just switch on/off a router everytime you need internet access
2. Yes fine to switch off electrical hardware when away from the house for a day or more.
3. Any electrical hardware that gets warm, keep it out of direct sunlight in the summer, and ensure they have ventilation

BTW biggest failure point on Sky boxes is the capacitors on the PSU. They seem to have a low life expectancy and replacing with better grade components improves them.

BTW 2, UK mains has not had a nominal value of 240V RMS for some years, the specification is now 230V bringing us closer to the common EU value