Bill wrote:

I have a Motorola SB6121 cable modem and a Cisco E1000 router.

The router needs to be reset (wires unplugged and replugged) one to
several times per day (for instance twice in the last half hour). On
these occasions, sometime the router is dead and unresponsive, and it
seems I need to temporarily unplug the modem too in order to get
everything going. It is possible I am not being "patient" enough, as
leaving the router unplugged for a few minutes sometimes resolves things.

Does it appear that I need a new router (rather than a new cable
modem)? If so, do you think the $60 Netgear AC1000 a good match for my
60Mbps internet service?

I apologize if these seem like stupid questions. I am at a loss as to
how to test the devices separately. The "lights" on the modem appear as
they should (but I don't consider that much of a test). I won't tell
you that I already bought and immediately returned a new
router--thinking the old one was "working again" after having the cable
modem reset by Comcast (which for some reason, appeared necessary during
the installation). Does it make sense that this would be necessary?

Thank you for any possible help.

Bill

You could take a look for exploits against the E1000.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.ph...s-routers.html

My first Linksys, I kept updating the firmware on it,
until the unit bricked. Which was a blessed relief, that
it finally "said goodbye" and I could buy something that
worked.

On that older design (box cost $300), the root cause of the instabilities
isn't the firmware instructions. It's the oscillator design.
Many of these chips can drive a quartz crystal directly. If
you mis-specify the crystal, it could be overdriven or underdriven,
and not be a reliable source of clock. The designs I used to
do, I selected four pin external oscillators, and used the
single ended drive method (that's the alternative method
listed in the datasheet). This makes it the four pin tin can
oscillator manufacturers only job, to make a reliable clock
source. I used to find that puts a stop to that sort of
"can't run a day without crashing" problem I was seeing on
my $300 less-than-stellar box.

I would not expect that to be the problem on the E1000,
because the engineers have had lots of time to pass "lore"
from one to another, about what not to do. Sometimes the
SOC design itself is defective, and that's why all the
best effort in the world picking external components, won't
help. Pushing the device with single-ended drive is better
than sitting at your desk with a "dollar cheaper design
that you don't know it works". It would help if there was
a clock monitor pin on the chip, so you could connect up
some instrumentation.

At least one product we did at work, the responsible engineer
left a unit running on a bench, as a proof of stability. And
it had an uptime of months (until someone wanted the bench
for a useful purpose). The test was pure showboating of
course, as there isn't "much science" in such a test, but at
least the dude was trying :-) I would have been more impressed
if the box searched for Mersenne Primes for eight months.

*******

When it comes to home networking boxes, nobody can really
afford to be smug. The number of devices with issues is
huge, and for customers, a purchase can turn into a
game of whack-a-mole.

Sometimes you get a good one and sometimes you don't.

They also do stuff to the cable modems. This doesn't directly
lead to the box next to it crashing, but it doesn't help.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/do...ems,30620.html

So as part of your "crash Olympics", you should be noting
any weird LED blink patterns.

One of the reasons I like to run IPV4 if I can arrange it,
is the protocol is "less chatty" than IPV6. I disabled
half of one box in the room, to try to make that happen.
If I'm not sending or receiving, the LEDs on my networking
tree are quiet. If the Windows 10 box is running, and I'm not
near it, I can expect all the usual "update shenanigans",
so it's harder to tell if anything untoward is happening
on that side of the room.

*******

So how do you select these things ?

I haven't a clue.

I tried a Newegg search "home router", sort on rating, and the results
look like rat ****. Some boxes, the analysis is easy, when multiple
customers note "box died in 8 months".

But how far could you trust a customer analysis of a problem
with the firmware ?

Even if you went to the Smallnetbuilder site and looked
at their reviews, they're mostly interested in Wifi performance.

As for the Wifi part, you really should not expect miracles. If
all your client boxes have 802.11N, then chances are a newer
box isn't going to make much difference on rates. And if you buy
a router with 8 Wifi antennas on the top, there's a good chance
it will overheat. As well as broadcast on a band you're not using
(until you switch that part off or something).

So I guess I'm the wrong person to be shopping for one of these,
because there's nothing of substance I can find in print about
them. You see, even a "brand name", means nothing... Like you,
I could pick one with the shiniest black plastic casing, but
that's not much of a selection criterion.

https://www.engadget.com/2016/02/23/...lement-router/

"ASUS' default log-in credentials:
username "admin" and password "admin" ."

[Which might be OK if it wasn't on the WAN side of the
box, but you just know you're not going to be that lucky.]

Paul