Buy small business level/enterprise grade stuff and it will last you decades. I haven’t needed to touch my router in a decade, it just works. Well I think it’s been a decade. Hard to keep track. Notably, enterprise stuff will have the AP (access point) split out from the router since they’re actually two separate things. Only consumer stuff has them combined.

You have to get industrial hardware built to last. I picked up an all-metal network appliance back in 2015 and it’s still kicking. Handles gigabit just fine as well. Here’s a random example of the type of thing I got (the exact one I got went out of sale years ago): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FKMJGD6/

You also end up having to split out your Wi-Fi to a dedicated access point this way for another ~$80, but you end up with a rock-solid setup that you can upgrade the software on year over year. I’ve ran at least 3 different OSs at this point since I’ve owned it and it’s handled them all perfectly. I’ve only had to upgrade my Wi-Fi AP once in that time.

This is anecdotal, only to say that the Linksys WRT-54G IMHO is/was a beast in the SOHO world. Back in 2013, I worked for the county replacing older equipment and it was time to upgrade the router in the fairgrounds lobby at the start of summer. Up we went to the rafters where it was and it was quite dusty in there, tons of pigeon feathers and miserably hot in the attic as most are. We pulled the router from service and replaced it with the new one already configured. The wrt54G was COVERED in dust, Pigeon droppings and feathers stuck to it. It ran forever that way I suspect. From what I was told, is was installed about 7 or 8 years prior, maybe longer.

To this day, I think Linksys must have partnered with Nokia's wizards for how sturdy that router was/is. You can still find them in our second hand stores and most people push DD-WRT on them. But since they are 10/100, they're not as popular anymore.

Router should, so long as you don't have some consumer garbage. But just the wireless radios alone on wireless is laughable. Shit changes every 5 years tops.

I'm still using the old 2014 apple airport extreme as a router/NAS.

Very funny, I stille have an old TPlink running now for 6 or 7 years, my parents had an old linksys that only did 2.4GHz running for 13 years or something. Before i replaced it for them.

I honestly don't know how a router breaks. It can become outdated or obsolete such that it can't interface correctly anymore or it can have a hardware failure that kills it by surges or physical damage, or it can be completely unsecure because it hasn't been updated in a decade but routing is "fairly simple" and just getting data throughput isn't rocket science software-wise.

My network stack has been running for many years now.

netgear cm1000 cable modem - since 2018 pfsense running on an old 1u supermicro server as router - since 2020 brocade icx switch - since 2016 hp procurve poe switch - since 2022 synology rt2600ac - since 2018, was router 2018-2020 and is AP since pfsense took over routing synology mr2200ac - secondary AP since 2020 cyberpower 1500va ups to run them - mentioning because power conditioning is maybe a factor in longevity Plus zwave and HA shit

Some of the stuff is way older too. The switches were bought from computer recyclers for real cheap and had definitely been in service for some time. The brocade is probably 10-15 years old at this point and the hp is probably 8 or so years old. The server running pfsense is from like 2009, maybe older.

house is running gigabit internet, 10g intranet, poe cameras, iot devices, etc with no issues. Probably over 100 devices on the network.

Agree. I have updated my Ubiquity router twice in the last month. I've updated HA ... a STUPID number of times in that span. Whoever wrote that is a dunce.

I was running Apple WiFi routers for a good 20 years. Maybe 1/4 died in that time, but many ran 20+ years before I abandoned them for newer standards. Some are still going as whole house audio streamers.

Do optical smoke detectors decline? They dont have radioisotopes anymore, so should work reliably for years?

the post is about wireless networks, not online services

The processor used in Commodore 64 and Apple I etc. is still in production today even if it's 50+ years old.