life expectancy of asus routers vs competitors?

[apollo18]

what do you guys would say the average life expectancy of a asus ac68u is?
would you say 5-10 years give or take depending on heat and usage? or is it completely random

and how would you compare the life compared to something like a netgear 7000 or a tp link router?

secondly would you say a small usb fan is a must? like would that really help life expectancy and keep temps low? or not necessary as long as the ventilation is good enough (ex not in a hot computer cabinet or something) i read and heard the asus techs despise that we use fans because they believe there fan system inside is good enough

 

[ColinTaylor]

A fan is completely unnecessary unless the router is in an unusually hot environment. Asus routers do not have fans inside them.

The life expectancy of the router will be longer than your desire to keep using it.

 

[apollo18]

ahh fair enough, and yeah thats true i hope so! i think i bought my router in 2015 and i dont see my self upgrading anytime soon unless it of course blows up or something but if it does last 10 years that would be great

 

[K-2SO]

what do you guys would say the average life expectancy of a asus ac68u is?

This one in particular is perhaps the most durable Asus model, IMHO.

 

[Marin]

Asus RT-AX89X has an internal fan.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[dlandiss]

what do you guys would say the average life expectancy of a asus ac68u is?

I wish I could give you an accurate reply. We have only been using ASUS routers for about 7 years and have 30 or so (mostly N66U, some AC68U) installed for different clients around St. Louis. None have failed yet. One dodgy wall wart, but I brought it home and it works OK here.

 

[indark]

if anything, grab a UPS for the router regardless of which brand you end up getting.

got 66u around 2013, I gave it to my aunt and it's still functioning just fine.
got 68u, maybe 2015? had 1 failure due to terrible power surge, RMA with Asus, still works fine till today.
was first-gen, and need some workaround to do ai-mesh that was introduced way later.
have ac3100 from 2017, still works fine, but I couldn't resist to get ax88 for 200 ;x so that's what I currently using ;p

 

[CaptainSTX]

Life is probably enhanced by using a UPS and if you live somewhere with lots of lightning install a surge protector (not a ground block) in the coaxial coming into you home and a surge protector on the Ethernet cable between your modem and router.

 

[Crazy]

I’ve always had linksys routers before buying my first rt-ac66u in 2013. The linksys router never got regular updates and only gets a few years of update. I still have my rt-ac66u as an ap, still running strong. My main router now is a rt-ac5300. ASUS seems to support all their router for a very long time compared to linksys.

 

[K-2SO]

One of my AC86U failed in what... a year time? Waiting for the second one.
The software is iffy too. I feel great when a new fw release thread hits 10 pages.

 

[HWDan]

An unpatched vulnerability can kill a perfectly good router before its time as well.

I trust Asus and Netgear the most for extended support. Tplink, not so much. They seem too quick to move their stuff to "out of support".

(And I have a perfectly good Dlink AC1600 router that I had on the shelf, but can't even gift it to anyone as Dlink won't bother patching a known vulnerability).

 

[Super Dave]

I would believe that the majority of instances that cause a router to "fail" is not hardware failure but obsolescence. I have a pile of old wireless routers from different vendors which other than being old, possibly not "secure/safe" and slow based on today's standards they all work fine.

 

[dlandiss]

I would believe that the majority of instances that cause a router to "fail" is not hardware failure but obsolescence. I have a pile of old wireless routers from different vendors which other than being old, possibly not "secure/safe" and slow based on today's standards they all work fine.

Those would make good access points, with the gateway router providing security.

 

[CaptainSTX]

Those would make good access points, with the gateway router providing security.

Maybe, but if you have really old routers such as Linksys 54s (G radios only 2.4 Ghz ), N66s (N radios) so using them for day to day APs would mean giving up a lot of throughput.

The best use for old routers is probably just using them as switches and turn off the radio(s) as really old routers have fast Ethernet LAN ports which works well enough for many applications or more current routers that have Gig LAN ports.

 

[coxhaus]

I have an old Cisco RV320 router with a slow CPU. It still will works fine if you use a layer 3 switch for local network work. Once you build a network this way your equipment does not go obsolete as fast. I was using my RV320 at my daughter's work just 8 months ago with 15 people. The router only has to open and shut the door for the internet traffic. It won't do a gig, it will handle the lower Cable connections. A hack came out and I was not going to wait for a Cisco fix so I took it out. The fix is out and I could reuse it again. This router will have support through 2023. It is end of sale now. This router came out in 2013.

 

[dlandiss]

Maybe, but if you have really old routers such as Linksys 54s (G radios only 2.4 Ghz ), N66s (N radios) so using them for day to day APs would mean giving up a lot of throughput.

Since streaming Netflix needs about 2Mbps, and Zoom less than half that, range becomes more important than speed here.

 

[CaptainSTX]

Since streaming Netflix needs about 2Mbps, and Zoom less than half that, range becomes more important than speed here.

Sure it can and will work for streaming but in this day and age people complain if they can't get 200 Mbps on their WiFi using an AP or mesh network. Do you need that speed for certain applications or devices no, but people are lining up to buy the latest and greatest WiFi 6 routers because they offer mega speeds.

How many recommendations do you see currently for the Linksys 54G router which you can still buy new for US$38 and if they still are as solid as the units built 18 years ago they would work fine for people in non WiFi congested areas that have sub 25 Mbps Internet connections?

I still have four 54Gs around. One which has been in service as a switch for five years, one that is set up as a media bridge which I use once a year and the other two just sit there on the shelf as I hate to discard them because flashed with DD-WRT they can be repurposed for something so I agree speed of WiFi isn't everything.

 

[coxhaus]

I ran an old Linksys 54G router in the old DSL days. It did 2.4 GHz 40mhz wide channels real easy. It may not be polite now days. I put tomato on it right before I switched to a Cisco PIX 501. Tomato was real good back then but Cisco PIX 501 was really neat. The PIX 501 was all character mode with only a CLI for your interface. I would run one today if Cisco would upgrade the processors to do a gig. PIX 501 is a firewall not a router. They were really fast with low latency back then.

 

[dlandiss]

Sure it can and will work for streaming but in this day and age people complain if they can't get 200 Mbps on their WiFi using an AP or mesh network. Do you need that speed for certain applications or devices no, but people are lining up to buy the latest and greatest WiFi 6 routers because they offer mega speeds.

I know, and I would not want to discourage ASUS sales. But most of the subscribers to this forum are more than just "people" -- they are more technically minded and understand the trade-offs.