dumping a croak

[stevech]

Today alone, I read folks saying their router "took a dump" or "croaked".

I wonder... I've owned many, and none have failed outright; just replaced as technology and standards march along.

 

[thiggins]

It happens, Steve. Just yesterday I replaced a neighbor's WGR614 that was stuck flashing its lights continuously after power cycling and trying a reset to factory.

I also had the radios in another of my own routers die after about a month (i forget which one it was).

On the other hand, my DGL-4500 provided many years of service before I replaced it with the WNDR3700v1 I use now.

 

[stevech]

Guess I'm lucky. Over the years I've bought WiFi stuff at home, from the onset of 11b, I must have had 20 routers/bridges/APs, mostly Linksys, and now I use Cradlepoint, some Airlink101, an SMC (yuck) and a couple of Netgear. Experiences with others' D-Link WiFi encouraged me to skip those. Professionally, I've used lots of Cisco Aironet, the volvo of WiFi (not the newer Airespace), Aruba, Tropos.

But none of these ever hard-failed.

I did have first generation (hot temperature chips) gigE switch from Linksys fail quickly. And so too a 1st-gen switch from D-Link. Second gen consumer switches seem to run a lot cooler. I have some Fry's store brand ones and a Netgear white-box switch that are fine.

 

[RogerSC]

My WNDR3700v1 had the wireless fail on it a few months ago. Had been using it 2+ years, and the wireless went away. No amount of re-flashing, resetting in various ways, power cycling, power cycling while resetting, etc. *smile* could bring it back.

So it goes.

 

[vinnie97]

My 5-year-old Asus WL-500W died recently. It simply stopped assigning DHCP addresses and wouldn't do so even after multiple resets or attempting reflashing using TFTP. I suspect a capacitor may have blown in the router itself with which I didn't feel like meddling. Two years ago, the capacitor in the AC adapter failed. Replacing it gave it a least provide a new (temporary) lease on life at least.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I lost 2 of mine after the hurricane (Irene). I usually go through many of them due to trying new ones, flashing with various firmware ever since DD-WRT, Hyper-WRT, Tomato first came out.

I've had 2 or 3 of them brick up while fiddling with firmware....I've been lucky enough to get all of them back to life by ripping the cover off, and doing that power cycle sequence while holding a metal tip to the short pins on one of the chips...and timing the launch of tftp firmware flasher.

I'm a firm believe that home grade routers are a bit sensitive, especially the power supplies...and I always try to have them on battery backup units. I follow this practice for clients of mine also...all network equipment for that matter. I don't have the failure rates I see others tend to have.

But back to losing my 2 after the hurricane....and I knew it was a bad idea, but wife and I needed internet. I had my network equipment running off of an APC Smart Ups 700 for a long time. The AT&T U-Verse gateway, my 1U SuperMicro Atom D510 linux firewall (currently running PFSense), wrt150N for access point, RV082 with IP ending in .2, no DHCP, being used as a switch to gain me ports..and can quickly be put into place when the linux firewall is offline. The APC 700 gave up the ghost about 2 months ago...just old age. So I had my units plugged into a regular APC surge protector plugged into the wall.

Came Hurricane Irene...power out for almost a week. Couple of days into it, borrowed a 5k generator from a friend. Fired up fridge, kitchen light, living light, my AT&T U-Verse box and other network equipment. I had reservations about running my sensitive network equip off of a generator...through just a surge strip. Yeah surge strips protect (can) from big spikes...but no protection from sloppy dirty fluctuating power, little dips (brown outs), tiny spikes, stuff that makes capacitors struggle. Sure enough...2 days into it, she got wonky. Break out my old backup...a wrv200...power was restored 6 days into it...but not long after...she went tango uniform too.

We also had many many customers that oddly enough, also had lots of IT related equipment flip out after the hurricane. From hard drives, to servers with missing HIVE errors, to switches, access points, routers, heck even optical mice. I have to take a wild guess that power, when restored after a big outage, comes back "dirty" for a while. Especially widespread outages such as what Hurricane Irene did to New England. As those linemen are bringing sections of the grid back online...things must be fluctuating wildly.

 

[thiggins]

All my electronics are powered off UPS. When I first moved to Virginia the local power company was troubleshooting something and cycled power on and off about five times in five minutes. Went out that same day, bought APC UPSes for all my gear and haven't looked back since.