Do you leave your router on at all times?

bsod

The first 'IT consultant' gave the most reasoned/informed/accurate response by far, unusual for a first time poster. What other people do isn't very informative, why they do what they do is, but only when it's based on solid foundations.

The only reason to leave anything on is convenience or need. The arguments in favour of switching off or leaving on should be obvious to anyone with an average iq - the decision doesn't require any IT knowledge

60-90 kwh/pa

EdGasket

RumRat wrote: »

I've never heard or seen a worthwhile argument for turning it off.

Fire risk! I actually had to replace the PSU on my router as I was advised by the supplier it could catch fire. Always turn off as much as possible when leaving the house.

spud17

johnfthetraveller wrote: »

I would be interested to know (as opposed to hearing what someone "thinks") how much electricity an average router uses in a year.

My router runs at 8W which equates to roughly £10/yr.
However when turning it on, that rises to almost double that for a few minutes.
Mine is on all the time to run a webserver.

bsod wrote: »

The first 'IT consultant' gave the most reasoned/informed/accurate response by far, unusual for a first time poster. What other people do isn't very informative, why they do what they do is, but only when it's based on solid foundations.

The only reason to leave anything on is convenience or need.

The first IT consultant who has never been back?

bsod

spud17 wrote: »

The first IT consultant who has never been back?

They have, they just haven't posted again, yet

50Twuncle

bsod wrote: »

The first 'IT consultant' gave the most reasoned/informed/accurate response by far, unusual for a first time poster. What other people do isn't very informative, why they do what they do is, but only when it's based on solid foundations.

The only reason to leave anything on is convenience or need. The arguments in favour of switching off or leaving on should be obvious to anyone with an average iq - the decision doesn't require any IT knowledge

60-90 kwh/pa

Not necessarily true - they can vary from less than a watt to 10 watts normal running power consumption - a 1 watt router would consume 8kw in a year - a 10 watt one would consume 80kw in a year - so depends on your particular model - 8kw = 8 units pa - or about 80 p per year - so hardly a good reason to turn it off - unless you are extremely tight ?
http://www.tpcdb.com/list.php?type=11

bsod

your own link goes up to 35 watts, so if you're going to post arguments based on user supplied unverified extremes rather than anything approaching a mean or typical value, lets use that one, £37 pa it is.

default state is off, the question to be asked is why is it on, not why is it not on. why is your hairdryer not on.

• The Home Hub v1 and v1.5 consumes 8 watts
• The Home Hub v2.0 consumes 10 watts (but has a standby mode that disables wi-fi and reduces consumption to 7 watts)
• talk talk routers 6-10watts

The question is much bigger than cost to a particular household.

50Twuncle

bsod wrote: »

your own link goes up to 35 watts, so if you're going to post arguments based on user supplied unverified extremes rather than anything approaching a mean value, lets use that one.

default state is off, the reason you should be looking for is why it is on, not off.

Since when was the peak value used as the mean ?
You should use the average - but it depends purely upon the actual model used ....
And the reason for leaving routers running 24/7 is down to connection speed - it DOES reduce considerably if you regularly switch them off/on

almillar

I would be interested to know (as opposed to hearing what someone "thinks") how much electricity an average router uses in a year.

You can find this out by looking at the labelling on the router, or its PSU. No guessing required.
I think someone already did the calculations earlier in the thread. This isn't leaving stuff on for the sake of it, there's an advantage (again, discussed throughout the thread). Leaving the lights and the TV on in an unused room is a waste of resources, leaving a router on is not. Have a look at the information on the powerline adaptors and it will tell you what it uses - times two of course.

If the cost (financial/environmental) of the router or powerline is important to you, then I also hope you've got plenty of insulation in your house, you don't heat it too much, you keep your fridge and freezer full etc etc - all of which will dwarf any saving made by switching off the router.

bsod

50Twuncle wrote: »

a 1 watt router would consume 8kw in a year 8kw = 8 units pa - or about 80 p per year - so hardly a good reason to turn it off - unless you are extremely tight ?

50Twuncle wrote: »

Since when was the peak value used as the mean ?
You should use the average - but it depends purely upon the actual model used ....
And the reason for leaving routers running 24/7 is down to connection speed - it DOES reduce considerably if you regularly switch them off/on

You introduced a ridiculous imaginary 1 watt router into the discussion to ridicule the mean (60-90 kwh/pa) value posted

Which shall we use as examples, the minimum, the maximum, the mean, the median, the user supplied unverified measurements

the connection speed argument is bollox, ask any 'IT consultant'.

beddo wrote: »

I'm an IT consultant. I turn my router off whenever I'm out of the house. I don't have any devices or systems that need a constant connection (Smart Home etc). I also have my own router, not an ISP one so don't worry about firmware updates etc.

Regarding the comment on line drops, this is known as training. Whenever a new line is provisioned it goes through training to work out the best trade off between speed and stability. If your line goes off and on *in quick succession several times* it can trigger retraining however turning it off for a few hours or overnight won't trigger retraining. They key for ISPs is that the connection goes off and back on, possibly at a lower speed. Most routers will also cycle through different connection settings if they are having stability problems.

RumRat

EdGasket wrote: »

Fire risk! I actually had to replace the PSU on my router as I was advised by the supplier it could catch fire. Always turn off as much as possible when leaving the house.

Your supplier was probably replacing a faulty PSU, which they thought could catch fire.
Nothing wrong with turning off your router if that is your choice. All the reasons for keeping on or switching off are purely individual considerations.
Cost for example. £10 per year doesn't even hit the radar in most households, but for some it may.
As I said, I've not seen a convincing argument for turning one off yet.
Amusing anecdote:- My Father-in-Law bought his first PVR. We visited a few days later, Mother-in-Law complained bitterly that he was now coming to bed late because he would wait up until the recording finished, so that he could then switch it off......A generational thing with him, he'd always switched things off before going to bed.
He doesn't switch the PVR off any more.....;)