Resetting the home router periodically

B

Bolimomo

On the recent subject of routers... it is advisable to reset (probably power-reset) your home router from time to time. Maybe once a week.

What I learned: I have a Netgear WNR1000 router at home, hooked up to a cable modem. I am going wifi from 2 of my desktop PCs to this router. When I do a "SpeedTest" on it, I typically would get about 8 Mbps to 10 Mbps throughput. Last night, I observed that something was causing the link speed down to a crawl. SpeedTest showed only about 0.5 Mbps. This was extremely slow. I power-reset the router (i.e. unplugged the power cable, wait for about 30 seconds, plugged it back in). I didn't even have to reset the cable modem (though it might be a good idea too).

Back to the desktop PC, SpeedTest again... voila! back to 10 Mbps.

Didn't think I would need to reset these routers from time to time. But... something on the router got stuck probably. I am going to put in a schedule to at least reset it once a week going forward.
 
I have had relatively cheap home routers degrade in performance over time. My solution is to replace them with a new one. I don't know how these routers are made, but they sure aren't made to last for the long haul.
 
Quote from Bolimomo:

On the recent subject of routers... it is advisable to reset (probably power-reset) your home router from time to time. Maybe once a week.

What I learned: I have a Netgear WNR1000 router at home, hooked up to a cable modem. I am going wifi from 2 of my desktop PCs to this router. When I do a "SpeedTest" on it, I typically would get about 8 Mbps to 10 Mbps throughput. Last night, I observed that something was causing the link speed down to a crawl. SpeedTest showed only about 0.5 Mbps. This was extremely slow. I power-reset the router (i.e. unplugged the power cable, wait for about 30 seconds, plugged it back in). I didn't even have to reset the cable modem (though it might be a good idea too).

Back to the desktop PC, SpeedTest again... voila! back to 10 Mbps.

Didn't think I would need to reset these routers from time to time. But... something on the router got stuck probably. I am going to put in a schedule to at least reset it once a week going forward.
More...

Resetting the router isn't a general requirement... Haven't reset mine in 2 years or so.
 
Boli,

Ya as I wrote on the other thread, I had this exact problem with 2 or 3 different Netgear routers. The most recent being the wnr-3500

Since I got the linksys its been rock solid...pretty much always maxed out at what my isp spits out.

Might want to look into changing/upgrading...it would suck to have slow internet or no internet :)
 
I am a big fan of the 8-port Linksys RV082. Have also had good experience with the 16-port version RV016. Have them in colocation. Never needed to power restart them. Have only rebooted them when upgrading firmware. I assume that the 4-port RV042 is also good.
 
I agree that in a perfect world, these routers shouldn't need to be reset and should work forever. (Just like what they said about Microsoft Windows.) But I also know in reality, any gadget that is programmed by human beings and has buffered data in its memory, over time it usually has some kind of performance degradation due to memory contention from memory not released properly for re-use, causing slow down, hanging, etc.. Only going through a re-initialization cycle would clear that kind of problems.

Most of these gadgets are designed WITHOUT a hardware reset button. Yeah, right. Armstrong switch it is.
 
Quote from Scataphagos:

Resetting the router isn't a general requirement... Haven't reset mine in 2 years or so.
More...

yes..my speed doesn't change over the time. haven't reset mine since i moved into my house...i see Boli mentioned "cable modem"..this seems to me a key words.....FIOS RULES!
have to agree that router's performance do degrade over the years. it will die very quickly, if you use heave load such as P2P..the only solution is to replace it
 
Quote from Steven.Davis:

I am a big fan of the 8-port Linksys RV082. Have also had good experience with the 16-port version RV016. Have them in colocation. Never needed to power restart them. Have only rebooted them when upgrading firmware. I assume that the 4-port RV042 is also good.
More...

I run a total of three RV042... I created a mesh VPN network of home, office, and weekend (really anytime I want) retreat. Rock solid! Every quarter or so I do a soft reset (restart) from the router configuration. Via VPN access of course!
 
Every time u buy a brand new router, you have to go to manufacturer's website and upgrade the firmware (usually new firmware available on the website once the router hits the shelf)

Check your router firmware, u may be surprised that few upgrades came out, and u did not know about them..
 
Depends simply WHAT your router is - brand, firmware.

I recently threw out my home router (AVM 7270, with a Windows 2008 R2 Server behind it doing some vpn stuff) and replaced it with a cheap (100 USD) Mikrotik. Trick here is: that is perfectly usable as home router, but is in fact an edge router for ISP's - you dont find many home routers caapable of doing BGP, MPLS etc.

Naturally I dont reset it daily / weekly ;) I upgrade firmware in regular intervals, butI expect it to RUN. THere are lots of companies installing this models in remote locations (they are nice edge concentrators for wireless ISP's, especialyl in some larger models with integrated wireless... iknow people running 30km links using Mikrotik).

The AVM - i had to reset ages ago regularly, but sinse a couple of of firmware updates - no, never.
 
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