Belkin Wireles Router always dies....

[MikeyPutsOut]

The gist of it is that we always have to unplug it to reset it every couple of days because the connection just dies randomly. My roommate says this used to happen to her at her old house. This used to happen to me at my old house as well, only that one was wired only. All three routers I'm talking about are Belkin.... is this a common belkin problem?

Thanks for the help guys!

 

[kevnich2]

I haven't used a belkin router but the few I've heard of basically suck. If you want a good stable router look at WHR-HP-G54, has great wifi as well.

 

[JackMDS]

Yap, it seems that Belkin's QA is Not Good and a lot of their units do not last long.

On the other hand some do work well. I.e. buying Belkin is like buying a Lotto ticket rather than buying Network device.

So as Dirty Harry would say: "Do you Feel Lucky Geek" buy Belkin.

 

[Gooberlx2]

My Belkin Pre-N router from a couple/few years ago would intermittently crap out. Somehow the router/firewall functions would just kill the router. After switching it to AP-only mode and using some dlink as the router, reliability became much better.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: MikeyPutsOut
The gist of it is that we always have to unplug it to reset it every couple of days because the connection just dies randomly. My roommate says this used to happen to her at her old house. This used to happen to me at my old house as well, only that one was wired only. All three routers I'm talking about are Belkin.... is this a common belkin problem?

3 of my Linksys routers did this too. Basically the problem is that the router sucks.

A few years ago I asked a file sharing forum why a Linksys router would crash when connected to the kademlia network for too long. The answer I got was that a router needs more memory if it is to handle more connections at one time. For a shitty router like a BFSR41 or WRT54g, getting slammed with UDP connections fills the memory, and from there it just doesn't accept more connections. That would mean websites don't respond, you can't connect to other computers in the network, etc. Doing a hard shut down (like on South Park) fixed the problem because the memory is cleared when the power is off.

Is that even true? I have no idea, but getting a more expensive router fixed the problem. I'm using what is basically the older model of this expensive D-Link router which I bought about 2 years ago. I'm connected to ED2K and Kademlia almost 24/7 and the router has never froze.

 

[JackMDS]

Routers are actually uComputers (most on a level comparable to the old 486 processor)

Just like a computer that would freeze (or run very slow) if the mem is too low and the OS is too Sh**, so are the Routers.

Some Routers have open source firmware (the OS of a Router) so there is a chance to tweak their capacity with free 3rd party firmware (Like DD-WRT).

Price does not necessarily indicate a better Router; some Brands tend to be more expensive than the others regardless of quality.

Problem is that the Vendors that sell Entry Level Routers are getting away with Not providing technical data but instead floods the users with marketing verbiage.

If you read the data Sheet of most Entry level Routers there is No technical differentiation between the hardware, they look the same. They describe the Network standards that they supposedly adhere to without providing any info about the actual hardware of the specific device (Like, CPU, Chipset, Mem, OS, Clock speed, etc.)

Of the sub $100, some of the Models offered by Buffalo, Asus, and Zyxel, are somewhat superior in their hardware.

The rest are existing on Marketing, and the need of most consumers to stay ignorant.

That said there are many Entry Level Routers that consumers are happy with. That usually means that the user have one or two computers, used for ordinary surfing, email, and Wireless within no passing walls, or one wall.

However since most consumers do not tell you what exactly they do with their Router, it make appear like every thing is "Peachy".