Speaking of routers, what's the typical life span?

[steve...]

My Asus RT-N66U has been good for about 6 ½ years now

I'm just wondering if I should be thinking about a replacement.

[ztirffritz]

I'm still using an Airport Extreme. Apple hasn't made routers for how long?

[mikebw]

I've only ever had one fail, and by fail I mean it actually reduced the bandwidth to the ISP.

[cbelt3]

Depends on build quality and performance and expectations. The older tech seems to last longer. My mesh network is only a year old, so far so good. Any my broadband just went up to 200MB, and it's handling it. Now if my corporate VPN would give me something over 70.... ugh. I pull down LOTS of data.... Gb on a daily basis.

[NewtonMP2100]

.....my Asus has been starting to droop a bit......but I think most people's are doing the same......

[clay]

I think they can last quite some time, though strength of the hardware that transmits/receives does reduce over time. The other thing to be aware of is that firmware and other software often stops receiving updates at some point, so there may be exploits "in the wild" for your particular router that may never get patched.

In general, though, I'd say as long as it is working for your needs, it's probably fine to continue to use it. Though you may notice speed, range, security and other features are much better on a newer device.

[N-OS X-tasy!]

My Time Capsule has been in continuous service since November 2011 with no issues.

[space-time]

I had a D-Link 614+ ("B" band I think) and that lasted for about 4-5 years.
Replaced with a Buffalo ("G" band) that worked until I got an Airport extreme ("N"). That worked fine for about 11 years until I upgraded to an "AC" mesh system.

All old routers still work, the only one that failed and it was recycled was the D-Link.

Use a good surge protector, or even better a good UPS to keep going during short outages.

[GGD]

I've generally replaced my WiFi based on technology / standards improvements rather than hardware failures.

802.11b -> g -> n -> ac 2ghz -> 5ghz

Usually when I start having a few devices that can use a standard newer than the access points support, I start thinking about updating the access points in the house.

[JoeH]

I had a Linksys router that lasted over 10 years, it still worked sort of at the end. I think the NVRAM was breaking down, wouldn't hold settings changs and occasionally crashed.