Why do all my routers die?

Over the past four years I've had three routers die, the fourth is giving up the ghost right now.

Is this normal? I'm not buying bargain basement units, the current one was ~$160 Netgear. My desktop is connected via cable to it and the connection is intermittent, requiring either a router reboot, or the computer, or both.

WiFi signal is spotty as well. If I can't connect right now, I can try in an hour and it works. Multiple devices, same symptoms.

Confused, and disappointed.

Heat, run a cooling fan next to it.

Be sure that any essential network hardware is drawing power from a UPS.  Momentary power interruptions may not hasten the demise of such hardware, but they will absolutely cause connectivity issues.

That's definitely shorter than expected, do you have any very long cable runs attached to this router? Also keep in mind that lifespan and reliability are two different things, and crappy reliability is quite common, I flash my routers to open-source firmware like OpenWRT to deal with that.

In reply to GameboyRMH :

With all the solid Timbers in our house we need high end ones and on average they last 2-3 years.  
      Part of that is due to my wife's work from home job.  I'm sure she's cooking them overtime with the focus she has and the level of work she does. 
    It's normal to put 12 hours in and some more time for her personal stuff.  
 The few hundred dollars is cheap compared to her income, so we just assume it's the cost of doing business . 

I switched to a vintage Porter Cable 1/2" router and that thing is a brute. A little too big for a small detail work but it will do a 1" deep cove in a walnut panel in one pass

I see this a lot with voltage feeding over the ethernet.  The router is connected to the modem which is supposed to be bonded to the house ground.  If that circut has a poor path to ground it feeds through those devices to the ground.  I also see where someone put in a separate ground for the cable/phone and that happens to be better than the house ground.  Do you have an inductive voltage tester?

I have decided to run a router mesh at the farm with 5 routers placed at all four corners and in the center of the house. One corner is in the rear of the garage, the second in the rear addition which has a big porch that it will service, a third in the master bedroom which is in the front of the house, the fourth in bedroom that is close to the front porch and finally the fifth centrally mounted unit to service primarily the kitchen. 

I'm tired of dead spots in my house.

QuasiMofo (John Brown) said:

I have decided to run a router mesh at the farm with 5 routers placed at all four corners and in the center of the house. One corner is in the rear of the garage, the second in the rear addition which has a big porch that it will service, a third in the master bedroom which is in the front of the house, the fourth in bedroom that is close to the front porch and finally the fifth centrally mounted unit to service primarily the kitchen. 

I'm tired of dead spots in my house.

You will probably still have dead spots.  Wireless network planning is a hard problem, if you put too many stations too close then they step on each other, too far and they leave dead spots.  The frequencies that we're using for wifi don't help, because the penetration through house walls is not great.

By far the best option is to run wires.  IMHO, the proper rule of thumb is that wifi is for devices that have batteries and get carried around -- anything that is plugged into the wall and sits in one place for a long time should have a wired connection.

As for the original question regarding router failures, a $150 Netgear box (really, anything with the Netgear logo on it) is still low-grade consumer stuff, but 3 in 4 years is more than I'd expect.  I agree that heat is one possible cause -- where do you have them installed?

codrus (Forum Supporter) said:

By far the best option is to run wires.  IMHO, the proper rule of thumb is that wifi is for devices that have batteries and get carried around -- anything that is plugged into the wall and sits in one place for a long time should have a wired connection.

 I completely agree.  Ipad?  Phone?  Sure, use the wifi.  Desktop workstations, gaming consoles, televisions are all hardwired in this house.  Expecting consistently satisfactory performance from wifi is to expect disappointment.

The router is installed on the same desk as the desk-top; because that's where the cable for the internet provider exits the wall (only place in the house with one).

I'm not running a modem along with it...should I?

I'll look into a UPS, lightning strikes and power outages have killed a few desktop power sources as well so I should have done this a while back.

Any good primers on basic equipment need for longevity? I honestly bought the first router because whoever my internet provide was at the time wanted to charge me $10 a month to 'rent' a router, so I just bought one and plugged it in...never did any research into optimizing any of the system.

My understanding is that if you have cable internet, then you need a cable modem.  My setup here is cable from the wall to the cable modem, ethernet cable out from modem to internet input on router, various ethernet cables out from router to peripherals needing internet connectivity, and wifi.  Honestly, because I've done it piecemeal as needed, it's a mess, but it's my mess, and right now, it works!

Edit:  I've lost track of the sheer number of devices wired to this network.  Today I'm adding my third 4-port switch to enable my son to have internet on his desktop workstation and stream video on his new LCD television.  It works reasonably well on wifi, but it doesn't work perfectly.

russde said:

The router is installed on the same desk as the desk-top; because that's where the cable for the internet provider exits the wall (only place in the house with one).

I'm not running a modem along with it...should I?

I'll look into a UPS, lightning strikes and power outages have killed a few desktop power sources as well so I should have done this a while back.

Any good primers on basic equipment need for longevity? I honestly bought the first router because whoever my internet provide was at the time wanted to charge me $10 a month to 'rent' a router, so I just bought one and plugged it in...never did any research into optimizing any of the system.

If it's sitting on your desk it's probably not overheating unless you're piling crap on top of it. :)

It used to be that a "cable modem" (which was not a modem, but whatever) was a standalone device that you plugged into your PC or a separate router.  These days they're pretty much all fully integrated with routers, so you don't need a separate box.  If it works at all then you're good on that front.

A consumer-grade UPS will keep the device running the power goes out, but it will not do any power conditioning or filtering or anything like that.  They basically operate by passing mains voltage through until the power drops out, then they flip a relay and start the inverter running off the battery.  Lightning will fry the UPS and then fry anything plugged into it.  True power conditioning equipment is both expensive (like as much as a new Miata) and unnecessary.

Modem takes the signal from your ISP and outputs over ethernet to a ...

Router that then gets the public ip from the modem and shares the internet over a network using private ips which uses a switch for ethernet and a wifi transmitter for wifi.

Gateway is the proper term for when the Modem and Router are combined into one device.

Why is the desktop using ethernet?  Is it a requirement for work?  I tell customers all the time to use wireless whenever possible so that they break that metal connection between the devices.  I also tell customers that it's my job to see all the failures.  People don't call and say hey it's working great can you come out and look at it.

I wire stuff up whenever possible and my routers last 5~10 years, cable runs are not terribly long though. There are a lot of dangers with longer cable runs like picking up charges from the atmosphere and grounding differences. Businesses like to use fibre optics for longer runs to get electricity out of the equation for these reasons.

Frenchyd, I don't think whatever your wife is doing is having an effect on router life (and that's before getting into the question of the correlation between her work intensity and bandwidth usage), I've seen no correlation in router life between idle office guest networks and those with heavy traffic running 24/7 - not to say it doesn't affect router workload much, because it does, many will run out of processing power before they saturate LAN bandwidth, just that it doesn't seem to affect router life.

If you look at my house most of the walls are solid wood. ( as much as 18 hours inches thick ) all hardwood. Only a few walls are sheetrock.  
  The Ethernet comes in on the third floor then has to go through 3&1.2 inches of wood flooring. Another 12 inches of joist  and whatever the ceiling in the 2nd floor is. ( varies) 
 We have a modem near everything 2.-3 feet away. (10) in total.