Comments

1. #1 glh

   October 22, 2012

   Not a single answer, but here’s an entire thread discussing this issue over at StackExchange: http://serverfault.com/questions/20182/why-would-wireless-routers-become-less-reliable-over-time

   One of the simplest suggestions was that electrolytic capacitors in the router may dry out over time. This would be gradual process so it wouldn’t cause a complete failure.

2. #2 MikeMa

   October 22, 2012

   Mythbusters coverage would be pretty slow teevee for the timescales under discussion.

   A few thousand years ago, I worked in radio and the tubes powering the broadcast antennas did degrade but I cannot recall anything like a linear curve. Cooling was a far more immediate and direct need.

   Skipping, also a radio phenomenon, could have an analogous wifi equivalent if the routers are moved relative to large conducting surfaces.

   I would like to skip the /. responses and see what others know of this.

3. #3 paul joseph

   california

   October 22, 2012

   Hi im paul.
   I would say first of all that i have been in ham radio computer design and programer, and can work miracle’s with just about any electronic device for years.
   and i will tell you without no uncertain doubt that a device like a router can degrade its signal over time.
   i have worked with radio’s as old as 50 years old and if they have power running through them and it is functional , it will produce the same signal as it did 50 years ago without degrade. reason for this is that with exception of tube radio’s , resistors or diodes or capacitors can blow out and fail causing a unit to stop working but not simple degrade.
   cause there is no ware and no moving parts.
   so if there is a router that is producing a weeker signal over time than its designed to do so.
   sounds crazy but if you think about it . its like a computer, a computer can not miss CALCULATE or preform a operation wrongly, if it fail its because of it was wrongly programed. computers dont make mistakes humans do..
   end of story

4. #4 Ken

   October 22, 2012

   My first thought is that many wireless access points either start with a default channel or choose a channel to operate on when first powered up based upon no other strong signals using that channel (frequency range) which can be detected at the time. Many will stick with that channel and never look again until a reboot.

   It could be as simple as neighbors setting up access points which use the same channel (or nearby channel), swamping those frequencies as the person moves a mobile device around geographically in their own house. There are many Android apps which can be used to look for channel interference and the signal strength of nearby channels in use.

5. #5 Eric Lund

   October 22, 2012

   Does this guy live in a single family house or in an apartment/condo complex? If the latter, he could be seeing interference from his neighbors’ devices. That’s less of an issue for single family residences, but still possible for a moderately dense neighborhood. I can detect my neighbors’ wireless networks in my house, with nearest neighbors being typically ~100 feet away in the neighborhood.

   If there is an uncompensated thermal drift in his wireless devices, that could also be the culprit. The effect would be that the carrier frequency of the devices has shifted off the nominal band frequency. I don’t know if this is an actual problem for actual router designs, but I could see some circumstances where this could come into play.

   Also, renovations could be a factor (this would be a subset of MikeMa’s large conducting surfaces scenario). Depending on the construction material, adding or removing walls could definitely change the propagation characteristics. If he’s in a multi-unit complex, this one could combine with interfering devices owned by his neighbors.

6. #6 Greg Laden

   October 22, 2012

   Interference and lack of a strategy to switch is being discussed over there. So, one recommendation might be to reset (turn off, unplug, replug, restart?) your router to see if that helps.

   Power supply may be an issue. One reader noted that the power supply on his router … the brick… was putting out 3 instead of 9 volts. Of course, he did not check that voltage when he installed it, so that may have always been the case.

   Makes me want to start testing voltage of my power bricks.

7. #7 Tony Sidaway

   London

   October 22, 2012

   I’ve got an ancient wireless router my son picked up second hand years ago. It still works, and I don’t notice any degradation. Just one data point.

   A radio transceiver does contain parts whose performance may degrade. For instance the choke coils could become permanently magnetised if they’re kept in the same position for a long time. I’ve no reason to believe this would cause performance to degrade in practice.

8. #8 Doug Alder

   October 23, 2012

   A Siemens router I had for about 7 years degraded to the point it had to be replaced. I suspect in that case that it was because it was kept on top of a cupboard (ceiling height) in the kitchen and just got too dirty from accumulated cooking grease

9. #9 dan l

   October 24, 2012

   I’ve heard the same myth, from a not-too-technical neighbor, relating that he had heard from a salesman that wireless routers are engineered to fail after a few.

   People are so suggestible… Knowledge is such hard work.

10. #10 travc

    October 25, 2012

    I too suspect that most cases of significant degradation are due to interference.

    In some environments (like my apartment complex), changing channels doesn’t really help much due to just how many devices are around. Also, unless I’m mistaken, the 802.11 channels actually overlap (IIRC you can get 3 non-overlapping channels at most).

    Also, the spectrum used for consumer wifi is the same spectrum that electronic devices are allowed to emit noise into. So it isn’t just other wifi devices that could be causing the problem… and we all know how electronic gadgets have been propagating.

    As for actual degradation. It can happen I suppose. Crappy capacitors, ferrite chokes getting magnetized (which I hand’t though of, thanks Tony), and a few other things could happen. I strongly suspect that these very rarely cause noticeable degradation though. General flakiness, sure, but degradation, not so much.

11. #11 Dean

    New Jersey

    November 13, 2012

    I am a CCNA certified Network Engineer by profession. When dealing with large companies, enterprise routers are used. I’m talking about loud, heavy, large metal boxes ranging in price from $400 – $100,000+ for a single device. The life expectancies of even those devices are usually around 20-25 years. Compare these to your $50 dinky Best Buy routers, and the scale is probably accurate that if you get more than a year out of your home router, you’ve done well.

    There are three differences:

    1. Enterprise routers have built in fans to prevent overheating. Retail routers do not.

    2. Enterprise routers are usually installed in a data room that is temperature controlled to be cooler than your standard 68-72 degrees.

    3. The components in enterprise grade routers are of much better quality than the components within a home entertainment retail router.

    4. In my experience, this has been the biggest home router degrader; every time you cut power and then restore power to the router, it has to go through reactivating all of it’s processes, and bringing itself back to full function. It’s a large burden on the components. So everytime the router loses power, you can expect it to be worse off when it comes back.

    My advice would be to find a clean, open, cool space for your router, and perhaps buy a small clip on fan and let it blow on low towards the router while you can supervise. Most importantly though, when you turn it on, DO NOT kill the power to it unless it is completely unavoidable. You may even consider purchasing a UPS unit so that the router will not lose power in an outage.