![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayneShort answer? Probably not.
This writer has a complex home network. Mesh-enabled, lots and lots of devices plugged into it, a decent-sized family using it heavily. And he did some benchmarking at various times of the day, testing throughput with multiple benchmarks, resetting the router, then doing it again. Not rigorously scientific, but still demonstrative. The result? Didn't make much of a difference.
So he talked to some router manufacturers. And the responses were pretty uniform: modern routers are highly engineered and pretty robust, they're designed to be reliable and have high uptime. If you're having performance issues, the problem most likely lies elsewhere: computer needs a restart, network issue with your ISP, poor network design (you might benefit from a mesh or a faster connection). Or you may need a better/newer router. And, of course, keep your router's firmware updated for performance purposes and to ensure it's patched for the latest security updates.
Do I reboot ours very often? Nah. We have occasional power outages, in which case I'll shut off our UPS which will power off the router. The funny thing is that I read this article last night in bed before I went to sleep, and during the night Russet was working and our ISP had a network shutdown for maintenance. The first thing she did? Reset the router. Didn't make any difference since the upstream network was dead.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3125791/i-rebooted-my-router-and-busted-reddits-favorite-tech-myth.html
This writer has a complex home network. Mesh-enabled, lots and lots of devices plugged into it, a decent-sized family using it heavily. And he did some benchmarking at various times of the day, testing throughput with multiple benchmarks, resetting the router, then doing it again. Not rigorously scientific, but still demonstrative. The result? Didn't make much of a difference.
So he talked to some router manufacturers. And the responses were pretty uniform: modern routers are highly engineered and pretty robust, they're designed to be reliable and have high uptime. If you're having performance issues, the problem most likely lies elsewhere: computer needs a restart, network issue with your ISP, poor network design (you might benefit from a mesh or a faster connection). Or you may need a better/newer router. And, of course, keep your router's firmware updated for performance purposes and to ensure it's patched for the latest security updates.
Do I reboot ours very often? Nah. We have occasional power outages, in which case I'll shut off our UPS which will power off the router. The funny thing is that I read this article last night in bed before I went to sleep, and during the night Russet was working and our ISP had a network shutdown for maintenance. The first thing she did? Reset the router. Didn't make any difference since the upstream network was dead.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3125791/i-rebooted-my-router-and-busted-reddits-favorite-tech-myth.html
no subject
Date: 2026-05-12 03:43 pm (UTC)I haven't had that symptom for a while; possibly it's a previous router; more likely it's the same router, but its behaviour improved when its environment changed. (I don't keep a log of when I replace what, or when outages occur and what succeeded in fixing them.) In retrospect, this is probably simultaneous with a linux system that couldn't seem to keep a constant IP address for its wifi interface. Possibly its flailing around was upsetting the router. Switching that box to ethernet only may have had the happy side effect of making the router more stable. And now that the problem system has a new distro, new kernel, etc. I have a well behaved home router. (Touch wood.)
no subject
Date: 2026-05-12 05:04 pm (UTC)I've had the problem - which does seem to be slightly improved - that up here a router rarely seems to last more than a year or two! I live at high altitude - 9,000' - and they just fail. This one is over a year old, so maybe it's a bit stronger? I suspect that it's a combination of thinner atmosphere and the free electron theory. I also have a problem with backup hard drives only lasting about a year or so on average. That, also, seems to have improved somewhat.