Do routers go 'out of date' ?

MidlandsGlory

Odd question I know. But I have a D-Link AC1200 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router Model No. Archer C5 which I have very happy with for quite a few years, it was a vast improvement over my previous one that often needed reboots. This one never did and did all I wanted, especially the sperate guest network, the gigabit ports etc.
But the demands on it have increased, there is a huge number of devices using it as its gone up and up. Certain devices such as security cameras, DVR, NAS drives have been given fixed IP's well away from dynamic ones and reserved in the router. 
But I am getting more instances where things seem to be struggling, IP cameras going on and off, people saying their device has lost internet etc. A remote reboot always sorts it out. Obviously the device has not had an update available in years. I wonder if its time for a newer model that might cope better with newer devices?

spectrum21

We used to use a VM provided router but kept getting slow connection, drop outs and we have a 200mb connection. Tried resetting, changing channels, changing to 5ghz only, etc but nothing improved. Did some research at lots of people were saying that the VM router could only handle so many devices any more than 12 I think and it’s stop playing nicely. When we added up all devices, tv, laptops, tablets etc we had way more so bought a Google Home Hub - brilliant and never had a problem since.

If you’ve tried trouble shooting and nothing improves then maybe it’s time to upgrade.

tacpot12

Routers don't really go out of date as such, but if you are using a very old router and very new devices to connect to it, those devices are going to be using a implementation of the old protocols that the old router supports (e.g. 802.3a), and this implementation might be a bit les well tested than the new protocols. It really depends on how the new devices have been given the ability to talk using the original protocols. In some cases, they are not using a new implementation, it's original code/hardware, in other cases it might be newly implemented code/hardware, in which case you might get more problems.

I would think that D-Link would not have tested the router will very large numbers of connected devices, so you could be seeing some issues related to the speed of the routers processors. A new router would be expected to cope with more devices and higher speeds of all the connected devices. I would suggest you try a new router, but keep the old router until you know the new one is any better.

MidlandsGlory

tacpot12 said:

Routers don't really go out of date as such, but if you are using a very old router and very new devices to connect to it, those devices are going to be using a implementation of the old protocols that the old router supports (e.g. 802.3a), and this implementation might be a bit les well tested than the new protocols. It really depends on how the new devices have been given the ability to talk using the original protocols. In some cases, they are not using a new implementation, it's original code/hardware, in other cases it might be newly implemented code/hardware, in which case you might get more problems.

I would think that D-Link would not have tested the router will very large numbers of connected devices, so you could be seeing some issues related to the speed of the routers processors. A new router would be expected to cope with more devices and higher speeds of all the connected devices. I would suggest you try a new router, but keep the old router until you know the new one is any better.

I do wonder if you may be right about newer devices, I have not logged it or anything but it seems to happen most often in my mind when the kids get home with their pretty new phones and laptops. What with the extra CCTV cameras, and now 2 TV's connected as well, sky box, Rokku, several PC's (home office)  numerous other phones and tablets, several network NAS drives and so on if its just too much.
Can't say I haven't had a good run for my money, I bought the router in the Staples closing down sale for something like £15! in 2015

Sandtree

As with all technology you have both changes in technologies (eg the wifi protocols AC and AX) and also the capabilities of the devices themselves (though these can be linked to the technologies too).

A newer router is likely to support newer protocols like 802.11ac or 802.11ax and also more concurrent wifi connections. Our router supports up to 40 wifi connections whereas the newer version of our router supports up to 120 connections.

Neil_Jones

A lot of routers tend to get shipped out with firmware that develops issues further down the line.  This may be because the hardware itself ages and eventually will pack up, or because it hits limits that were not a problem at the time when it last saw an update.

Sometimes you can replace the firmware with an open-source variant, something like OpenWrt or DD-WRT, though this depends on the hardware of your router. A lot of them, particularly the cheaper ones, tend to be rebranded something else.  These open-source variants may add extra software features or "get round" issues in the original firmware, as well as making them potentially more secure, assuming of course the issue is just that the software can't cope with the increase in the number of devices - if the throttle point is hardware based nothing you do is going to help that, short of replacing it.

However as a general rule and in my experience if a router loses internet access and it needs a reboot to get it back online again, it's usually a sign that it's on the way out.

John_Gray

The better quality [business] routers, such as DrayTek, update their firmware on a regular basis to fix any problems encountered, and sometimes to add new features.  In most instances these are way beyond what the home customer requires.

CoastingHatbox

Routers can become less reliable with age, especially if using electrolytic capacitors or they have poorly soldered joints etc.

It could be that you are hitting a performance constraint of the router with the number of devices attached and the number of packets passed.

It could be a problem with your ISP if the problems your household complain about relate to external services.

It could be that the router doesn't have enough wireless transmitters/receivers to support the number of wireless devices you have.

It could be a wireless device on your network causing extra WiFi contention by abusing RTS/CTS frames.
The problem is, it isn't easy to see what is going on and replacing the router may not necessarily solve the problem. It might be worth checking the logs on the router when a problem occurs, quote from the manual:
"Choose menu “Advanced→System Tools→System Log”, and then you can view the logs of the router."

It could be worth visiting the Think Broadband website and setting up the Broadband Quality Monitor which will give some indiciation as to how your internet connection is performing.

It might be worth setting up some basic monitoring on your network with SmokePing, Zabbix or something similar. There might be a package you can install on your NAS that will do some basic monitoring? If the problems are isolated to a single device or a small number of devices, then it is possible it is not the router but those devices themselves (my IP cameras will periodically stop streaming video so I have to keep an eye on that).

With my setup, I have a firewall (pfSense) setup, with a seperate switch and two separate Wireless Access Points. The nice thing about this, is that all the devices support SNMP (simple network monitoring protocol). They are monitored with Zabbix, which logs the data and puts it in nice graphs. I can see at a glance the CPU utilisation on my firewall, the memory utilisation on the switch, the number of clients associated to each wrirelss access point etc.. It means that I'm able to pin point any issues in my network. It is probably a bit OTT for a home network, but it is related to my profession and it has been a real boon to us working from home.

There might be some easier tools available to collect and present the information you need to make good decisions around fixing up your home network. A simple fix might be using a seperate modem/router, switch and access points so that you don't have one device responsible for all three responsibilities, distributing the load accross them.

A_Lert

In terms of Wifi standards that's not obsolete.

However if the router isn't getting firmware updates then it may be vulnerable to hackers, so for security you would be best replacing it. You could double-check the model number for new firmware on D-Link's support page, https://eu.dlink.com/uk/en/support

Home routers also have their limitations. A lot of devices could be too much for it, especially if those devices are each making many simultaneous connections. It's also possible one specific device is doing silly things that end up slowing the wifi down for everything else.

MidlandsGlory

Thank you all for the advice.
I have tried to lighten the wifi load anyway, main PC, NAS drives, Sky box etc and smart plug master are all hard wired using an extra gigabit switch. High traffic devices like the TV's and the hybrid security DVR, some of the IP cameras.. are via a smart plug network.
Its usually like one device slows right down (on wifi only) slows right down to the point you get browser timeouts, sometimes it picks up itself in a few minutes, other times I need a router reboot. Other devices are not affected at the same time. Perhaps an IP conflict due to some glitch? or wifi channel contention? 
The wifi IP cameras connected to a wifi access point (via a smart plug direct back to the switch) work 100%, never a break.
The wifi IP camera connected directly to the router wifi seems to lose connection quite frequently and then reconnects.
All this narrows it down to me that the router is handling direct connected traffic OK, but its wifi is sometimes flaky...
Its not a major situation yet, but perhaps time to start keeping an eye out for a bargain replacement to come up.