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Warning: My 15 year old router was the problem, not my ISP, and 2 phone calls fixed it
For 7 months my wifi died every night around 9pm and I blamed Comcast, called them twice, and even bought a $90 range extender that did nothing. Then a guy at work in Dayton told me to check my router's age, and mine was 15 years old with a known firmware bug that chokes under heavy evening load. I logged into 192.168.1.1, updated the firmware, set a 12 character password, and turned off WPS, and the dropouts stopped that same night. Turns out the fix cost me zero dollars and about 20 minutes. Has anyone else had an old router do this, or am I just late to the party?
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leer126d ago
A firmware update on a 15 year old router is a band aid, not a fix. That thing is running hardware from 2009, it probably can't handle more than a few devices at once, and the security holes in it go way past WPS. You got lucky this time, but the next dropout or the next exploit is right around the corner because the chip inside is just too old to keep up. Spending zero dollars feels good until you're back here in three months with the same problem, or worse, someone's on your network. A new router costs less than that range extender you already wasted money on and you won't have to babysit it. Comcast is still trash, but blaming them for everything means you skip the part where your own gear is the weak link.
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