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Why Do We Have To Restart Routers?

jaypaulw writes "I've owned a WRT54G, some cheap D-Link home Wi-Fi/firewall/routers, and now an Apple Airport Extreme (100/10 ethernet ports). In the context of the discussion about the worst uses of Windows — installation in places where an embedded device is superior — I've gotten to wondering why it's necessary to reboot these devices so frequently, like every few days. It seems like routers, purpose-built with an embedded OS, should be the most stable devices on my network."

2 of 936 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The most likely reason by nuintari · · Score: 5, Interesting

    mod parent up, as I came here to say that.

    Also, the Linksys WRT54G up to version 4 was a fine router, plenty of memory, ran Linux, was very stable. Then Linksys decided that quality wasn't nearly as important as driving me batshit insane, and we started getting tons of complaints about users needing to reboot Linksys routers, which came _highly_ recommended from the geek squad over at worst buy.

    The modern WRT54G, and anything past version 4, that doesn't have an 'L' in the name is an utter piece of crap, firmware revisions to the VXworks OS they now run have helped, but they are still lockup city.

    --

    --Nuintari

    slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.

  2. Re:embedded network devices by bwy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Funny, I think everyone here has had to reboot their router to solve problems in the past. But, in typical slashdot fashion, 99.9 percent of the posts are people telling the author of the question that he is stupid, lacks intellectual ability, must be a high school drop out, or has some bastardized sexual persuasion that prevents his router from working.

    As you say, it could be an unrelated issue that resetting the state machine fixes. In this case though I guess I superior device could do this on its own.