FAST reliable router?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Noozer
  • Start date Start date
You seem fixated on heat issues, I have never seen such a
problem with these routers or switches most all of which run
off low voltage "wall warts". The rack mounted ones don't
suffer from heat problems either. Do you live in a tropical
clime? You might want to invest in some air conditioning.
Click to expand...


What did you feel running off low voltage wall warts had to
do with anything?

They're like EZ Bake ovens inside. I've replaced popped
capacitors on quite a few routers. Belkin might be the
worst, but then it's hard to say for sure as many people
haven't had theirs running very long.

Is your current router 10 years old? If not, you don't
actually know if the heat will ultimately effect it. Some
things like a PC might get a great bit of benefit from an
upgrade, but a properly working full featured router may
easily be viable for 10 years if not for other things not
necessarily requiring the "router" portion of gear be
replaced like adding wifi, or upgrading to wifi version
nnn.nnn

Many people do have heat issues that not only shorten the
lifespan but cause perpetual lockups. Since I am mindful of
the situation I tend to allow enough ventilation and don't
have the problem, but it is common to see others go through
several routers trying to find one that will not crash
during P2P activity or whatever, a more strenuous use than
just sitting idle.
 
kony said:
What did you feel running off low voltage wall warts had to
do with anything?

They're like EZ Bake ovens inside. I've replaced popped
capacitors on quite a few routers. Belkin might be the
worst, but then it's hard to say for sure as many people
haven't had theirs running very long.

Is your current router 10 years old? If not, you don't
actually know if the heat will ultimately effect it. Some
things like a PC might get a great bit of benefit from an
upgrade, but a properly working full featured router may
easily be viable for 10 years if not for other things not
necessarily requiring the "router" portion of gear be
replaced like adding wifi, or upgrading to wifi version
nnn.nnn

Many people do have heat issues that not only shorten the
lifespan but cause perpetual lockups. Since I am mindful of
the situation I tend to allow enough ventilation and don't
have the problem, but it is common to see others go through
several routers trying to find one that will not crash
during P2P activity or whatever, a more strenuous use than
just sitting idle.
Click to expand...

OK, here we go again, I don't find your statements credible,
do you have a source for your claim the "many people have
heat issues" with networking gear? Is there someone other than
yourself who has compiled such data? Is this "problem" mentioned
in some article or review? Are you claiming that you have personal
contact with these many people? How is it that you commonly "see
others go through several routers"? If you don't have these "people"
reporting their replacements to you, how do you know about it? If
many people report to you every time they change a part on their
systems, Why are they doing so?

I have had a BEFSR41 running continuously for at least eight years,
here in south central Texas. It has had no problems what so ever.
I can't speak for all the other users, I, unlike you, would need to hear
from them or find some survey that has noted such a problem.

Your odd idea that there must be 10 years of faultless operation
before you can find your equipment to be working reliably, is
plain stupid. To use that concept to say people shouldn't buy a
piece of equipment, or that it is inherently unreliable is also very
stupid, and somewhat malicious.

Your EZ-Bake statement is total BS. The BEFSR41 is supplied
9v AC at 1000mA (in the low range of most telco equipment)
and draws much less current than it is supplied. You can only
find a small area of the case that you can detect a little warmth,
holding it to your cheek. Remember mine has never been off,
except for storm related temp. power outages, for at least eight
years.

I have plenty of other equipment operating under similar
conditions; Gigabit switches, Cable and DSL modems,
wireless phone base stations, phone answering machines,
carbon monoxide detectors, ect... None of them are
noticeably hot, all operate at low voltages and draw less
than two amps.

Luck;
Ken
 
OK, here we go again, I don't find your statements credible,
do you have a source for your claim the "many people have
heat issues" with networking gear?
Click to expand...

I suppose you'd have to stop pretending you know something
and actually get out on the internet a bit more... because,
for example, many of the bargain hunting 'sites about router
deals have tons of people complaining about the problem with
their present gear.

You don't bother to look for evidence then claim you dont
see a problem. How odd? I don't write these things to be a
fiction, if I hadn't seen it mentioned time and time again I
wouldn't have mentioned it either.
 
What did you feel running off low voltage wall warts had to
do with anything?

They're like EZ Bake ovens inside. I've replaced popped
capacitors on quite a few routers. Belkin might be the
worst, but then it's hard to say for sure as many people
haven't had theirs running very long.

Is your current router 10 years old? If not, you don't
actually know if the heat will ultimately effect it. Some
things like a PC might get a great bit of benefit from an
upgrade, but a properly working full featured router may
easily be viable for 10 years if not for other things not
necessarily requiring the "router" portion of gear be
replaced like adding wifi, or upgrading to wifi version
nnn.nnn

Many people do have heat issues that not only shorten the
lifespan but cause perpetual lockups. Since I am mindful of
the situation I tend to allow enough ventilation and don't
have the problem, but it is common to see others go through
several routers trying to find one that will not crash
during P2P activity or whatever, a more strenuous use than
just sitting idle.
Click to expand...

I always allow ventilation and i've still had the problem with many
routers . I realised I can rip the rop off my linksys but I only tried
that after it was broken.

It's not always poor ventilation that causes the heat problem. What
routers/models have you found to not have the problem?

My speedtouch router runs fine. I've noticed it has holes on the
bottom, so I run it upside down.

My linksys had little legs, and holes (top or bottom i can't remember)
but it didn't save it!
 
kony said:
I suppose you'd have to stop pretending you know something
and actually get out on the internet a bit more... because,
for example, many of the bargain hunting 'sites about router
deals have tons of people complaining about the problem with
their present gear.

You don't bother to look for evidence then claim you dont
see a problem. How odd? I don't write these things to be a
fiction, if I hadn't seen it mentioned time and time again I
wouldn't have mentioned it either.
Click to expand...

I just did a Google on "BEFSR41 heat problem" and could find
no problems that were found to be heat related, all the problems
were found to be firmware related later in the thread. That is only
for the returns I looked at of course, I'm sure if I spent all day I
would find someone who actually had a heat related problem with
the BEFSR41. There appears to be more such problems with
routers using the AR7 chipset, including the Linksys WAG routers.

Doing a Google on "router heat problem" there are of course
plenty posts about routers that the poster thinks might be having
heat related problems. Almost all the times I see the BEFSR41
mentioned it is as an example of a cooler running router.

Now my characterization of what's being said on Google, can
be easily checked by anyone. Where as, your claim of these
"many people" who have these problems comes from what?
You can find, if you search hard enough, a few "Linksys haters"
like you can for any well known product line. One of them who
calls himself "RouterRanger", argues that Linksys's designs do
a bad job at heat management, but he appears to use a lot of
exaggerated statements in his posts, at least in those I saw.

Now if you could supply some reference to the many "bargain
hunting sites" that you have visited to gain the impression you
trumpet. If you have been there, you should know how to direct
someone else to at least some of the "many" sites.
 
I just did a Google on "BEFSR41 heat problem"
Click to expand...

How about "router", "lockup" or "reset", "reboot", etc?

Did you REALLY think you'd find someone who wrote the exact
phrase "BEFSR41 heat problem"? When I sought BEFSR41
lockup, I did find related hits.

However, if you look back at my post, I did not specify this
model in particular being any more subject to overheating,
actually it's probably a little better in that regard than
some but not built to be immune either... depends a bit on
the environment. Certainly some people will have different
ambient temp, different placement of theirs, some will run
cooler than others.

In some cases it may not be heat related, if there's a
firmware bug or some other problem, but this goes back to a
suggest I'd made, to check whether it responds to attempts
to lower the temp.

and could find
no problems that were found to be heat related, all the problems
were found to be firmware related later in the thread.
Click to expand...

Your post is reading a lot like you have one and therefore,
if yours works fine then nobody could have a problem you
don't. Unfortunately 1 case of a product working fine is
not proof that others do too.

Let's consider the firmware though, is it any consolation if
it's locking up from that instead of overheating?

Perhaps a better question is, why the focus on the BEFSR41,
given that it is only a slight bit cheaper than wifi
routers, and wifi was one feature the OP expressly wanted?


That is only
for the returns I looked at of course, I'm sure if I spent all day I
would find someone who actually had a heat related problem with
the BEFSR41. There appears to be more such problems with
routers using the AR7 chipset, including the Linksys WAG routers.

Doing a Google on "router heat problem" there are of course
plenty posts about routers that the poster thinks might be having
heat related problems. Almost all the times I see the BEFSR41
mentioned it is as an example of a cooler running router.
Click to expand...

Linksys products are built better than average, I had not
meant to suggest avoiding BEFSR41, except that it has fewer
features than needed.


Now my characterization of what's being said on Google, can
be easily checked by anyone. Where as, your claim of these
"many people" who have these problems comes from what?
You can find, if you search hard enough, a few "Linksys haters"
like you can for any well known product line.
Click to expand...

Certainly there are people who will just swear off an entire
manufacturer's product line, but usually such a decision IS
made in retrospect of having a problematic product. The key
detail is then which product, and most applicable to this
thread would be those having problems with particular
routers most suited to the OP's requirements. Since one
model coming close to that is Linksys' WRT54G, I'd mentioned
that some of those have been shown problematic - but not
necessarily heat related, and not all versions... but the
present version without "L" at the end does seem to still
have firmware problems.


One of them who
calls himself "RouterRanger", argues that Linksys's designs do
a bad job at heat management, but he appears to use a lot of
exaggerated statements in his posts, at least in those I saw.
Click to expand...

I'd say they use average reference designs, that their cases
could have a few more vent holes, and that they'd be cooler
if sitting vertically as some of their newer models do...
but the primary problem isn't that Linksys had deviated from
what anyone else was doing with their designs, it's just a
matter of the typical heat any similar design produces
within a small passive case.
 
Ken said:
I just did a Google on "BEFSR41 heat problem" and could find
no problems that were found to be heat related, all the problems
were found to be firmware related later in the thread. That is only
for the returns I looked at of course, I'm sure if I spent all day I
would find someone who actually had a heat related problem with
the BEFSR41. There appears to be more such problems with
routers using the AR7 chipset, including the Linksys WAG routers.

Doing a Google on "router heat problem" there are of course
plenty posts about routers that the poster thinks might be having
heat related problems. Almost all the times I see the BEFSR41
mentioned it is as an example of a cooler running router.

Now my characterization of what's being said on Google, can
be easily checked by anyone. Where as, your claim of these
"many people" who have these problems comes from what?
You can find, if you search hard enough, a few "Linksys haters"
like you can for any well known product line. One of them who
calls himself "RouterRanger", argues that Linksys's designs do
a bad job at heat management, but he appears to use a lot of
exaggerated statements in his posts, at least in those I saw.

Now if you could supply some reference to the many "bargain
hunting sites" that you have visited to gain the impression you
trumpet. If you have been there, you should know how to direct
someone else to at least some of the "many" sites.
Click to expand...


Anyone can buy a router. Anyone, after reading a little, should be able to
configure one. Many folks miss this important step.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/CustR...ortField=3&SummaryType=ALL&Pagesize=100&Page=

"Comments: this router is descent, u get what u pay for. the reason i am
giving it a 4 and not a 5 is because of the fact that noobies like me at
routers don't get very much help in the "pamphlet" userguide, otherwise ive
been running with it for the last 3 hours and no problems so far, also good
idea to <font>u</font>pdate the firmware from linksys websight"


On most North American cable ISPs the entire Linksys line will allow wired
PCs online, without configuration.

http://portforward.com/

One weakness of most common routers in the inability to deal with Bit
Torrent traffic. The router and modem will need to be power cycled every few
days. I've also seen the tracert command cause Linksys units to restart, but
only when using Windows. Linux and *BSD, no problems. This problem was
corrected with May 2006 firmware.


Several Linksys WRT54xx products have excellent 3rd party firmware available
to deal with this and other quirks.

http://www.dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv2/index.php
http://www.sveasoft.com/
 
On most North American cable ISPs the entire Linksys line will allow wired
PCs online, without configuration.

http://portforward.com/

One weakness of most common routers in the inability to deal with Bit
Torrent traffic. The router and modem will need to be power cycled every few
days. I've also seen the tracert command cause Linksys units to restart, but
only when using Windows. Linux and *BSD, no problems. This problem was
corrected with May 2006 firmware.

Several Linksys WRT54xx products have excellent 3rd party firmware available
to deal with this and other quirks.

http://www.dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv2/index.php
http://www.sveasoft.com/
Click to expand...

Installing Sveasoft firmware is like playing Russian roulette with
your router. The features you have to pay for and wait a year to be
bug-free are already in the available DD-WRT builds for free.

Best Regards.
 
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