This Is Why Your Router Dies Too Soon

We all need at least one router, and probably more than that with large homes and smart devices everywhere. Buying a router or mesh system isn’t cheap either, so you want that gear to last as long as possible.

Unfortunately, there are a few factors that could shorten the usable lifespan of your network gear, but the good news is that you can do something about most of them,

6

Overheating and Poor Ventilation

Your router is in fact a small specialized computer. It has a CPU, RAM, storage, and all the other bits and bobs that other computers in your home have. Which means that heat caused by poor ventilation can kill your router just as it would a desktop PC, laptop, console, or other similar computing device.

Routers generally have some sort of cooling solution. The most basic models just have passive cooling, with vent slots in the case to allow air to carry heat away naturally.

Higher-end models with fast processors can have active cooling, with fans forcing air through the vents. In either case, if the vents are blocked with dust and the router is in a spot where there’s no access to fresh air, there’s a good chance you’ll be replacing it or, at the very least, facing spotty performance as it throttles itself to avoid melting.

5

Power Surges and Unstable Electricity

This is probably the most common cause of all my router deaths. A spike in power can take out a router in an instant, which is why I always use a surge protector at the very least.

Since I live in a part of the world with lots of blackouts, I actually use a special battery backup device for routers using LiFeP04 technology which can keep the old girl up and running for several days in a pinch. This also doubles as protection from power surges.

4

Constant Heavy Usage Without Breaks

As I mentioned already, and will probably mention a few more times in this list, heat is the enemy of electronics like routers and one way to heat yours up is through constant heavy usage. If you’re shifting hundreds of gigabytes every night over your LAN or have a house full of bandwidth hogs, those routers are taking wear and tear, literally bit-by-bit.

This is one of the reasons high-performance routers exist in the first place. Typical home routers aren’t designed to be worked this hard, but high-end gaming routers, for example, will shift terabytes around all day without breaking a sweat thanks to their cooling systems.

3

Poor Placement

Putting your router somewhere dusty with no ventilation is but one placement mistake you can make. There’s also humidity to consider, since if there’s one thing electronics hate more than heat, it’s moisture.

The other easy placement mistake to make is putting your router or mesh router pod in direct sunlight. All the cooling in the world isn’t going to help you if the big ball of nuclear fire in the sky is directly baking your router. So put it in a cool, dry place out of direct sunlight!

2

Cheap Router Hardware

If you buy a cheap router, or stick with the router your ISP threw in with your contract, don’t be surprised if it dies sooner than you expect. Personally, I have never had an cheap or freebie router stick around for longer than a year or so before something goes wrong.

There’s nothing wrong with using a $20 router if you have no other choice, but if that’s what your internet connection relies on, you may want to use that time to put together the funds for something with more durable components, and you’ll get better performance and reliability to boot.

1

DIY Mods

There are plenty of routers out there that can be modded with custom firmware, and this is one way to reuse an old router and breathe new life into it. However, when you do start to mod a router and do things like overclock it or otherwise push it out of spec, you run the risk of shortening its life.

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This is particularly true if its cooling and power components were designed to their original specs and not much more, which can mean modding requires some hardware upgrades too. Then again, if you’re at the point where you’re modding your router, it was probably at the end of its useful life anyway, right? So have at it, I guess.