Because they’re mostly shite? This is a topic that you can’t get my pal Phatlewt started on unless you want to hear a rage-induced rant. We’ve gone through 5 at least in the last 3 years.
Belkin is by far the worst brand for home routers. Most of these things barely get past year two so its not uncommon to keep buying them. Also, a lot of “dead routers” are just dead power supplies. Next time, replace the wall wart and see if it works.
Mine die fast too. My wired router (belkin) still works. I have replaced my wireless router twice, and my newest router is acting strange already.
I don’t know why they die so fast, but my impression is that they overheat because they are left on 24 hours a day.
Whilst it is of course important to attach your router’s power supply to a surge protector you should also use surge protection for the phone line.
Consider something like this
On the bottom of the image you can see the ‘in’ and ‘out’ ports for the phone line. As a mobile IT technician I have seen many people with fried modems who are surprised that their surge protector did nothing to prevent it.
I had a belkin appear to die recently, re-setting did nothing (think I asked about it on here). All that was required, though, was a default to factory settings on the router page followed by a re-setting up of the network. There’s a comment on this on the belkin site, it’s something to do with the lease for setting up an IP address expiring with the provider. Worth a try if you’ve not done this already.
Practically every problem I see on dead or dying electronics has to do with the filter capacitors on the power regulating circuits. These electrolytic capacitors seem to wear out quicker than any other component. Sometimes, they even balloon, leak, and burst!
I attribute it to the fact that electrolytic caps are the most expensive and largest discrete components in the circuit. That makes it very profitable for companies to use the smallest and cheapest components they can to fit the bill. The caps used in the design usually barely meet the requirements and are put under a lot of stress so they wear out quicker. IF you can find them, AND are handy with a soldering iron, AND the component failure hasn’t fried anything else, you can replace the existing caps with higher rated ones and solve the problem.
Wireless routers in compact (poorly ventilated) cases also tend to overheat the transmitter easily, particularly if you use third party firmware and turn up the transmit power (I’m guilty).
Hmm. Should I be concerned about leaving my Airport Express plugged in all the time, given the discussion so far?
Probably not, you paid dearly for it and I would expect Apple would use better components than other brands.
The Airport finally died, but it took it, I dunno, five years?
I am delighted to report that in the eight years since this zomble was started, routers seem to have gotten better. Sometimes things do improve!