I agree that much of the problem is the hardware. I went through several cheap routers before I finally found one that was stable after a year of use. That one

I agree that much of the problem is the hardware. I went through several cheap routers before I finally found one that was stable after a year of use. That one worked great for >8 years. I just upgraded, and went with a device intended to be a commercial AP, but since it has two Ethernet jacks, it makes a great router under Openwrt. So far, it seems pretty good, but I'll be happier if I see uptimes of more than a year.