4 ms·

That may be true for most smart home gear, but I place routers in a slightly different class of home electronics. Like gaming consoles, for performance and upgr

That may be true for most smart home gear, but I place routers in a slightly different class of home electronics. Like gaming consoles, for performance and upgrades to the latest standards (Wi-Fi 6E, for example) you’ll likely need a new router every 5-7 years. There was a short period where 802.11ac routers were initially not very good and then the second-gen 802.11ac routers arrived and were substantially faster/better chipsets. If I recall correctly, the Apple AirPort Extreme was an example of the former and the Google OnHub an example of the latter. Now we have “mesh router sets” that trade features and performance for smaller sizes and cheaper components. Hopefully in the Wi-Fi 6E timeframe we’ll go back to performance routers that don’t look like spiders. It’s not that I don’t expect devices to get updates, but so much in networking gear depends on working around chipset bugs, I can’t imagine every router manufacturer supports their routers equally well... the number of routers I’ve bought that didn’t last even two years could probably fill a medium-sized box for me. Which highlights how hit-or-miss buying such gear tends to be, I suppose.

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
You need to replace all of your devices, too, in order to take advantage of those new WiFi specs. Do you buy all new devices when you buy a new WiFi router? I don’t.
- lstamour 6y ago
  Right now I’m waiting to buy a new router even though I do have 2 of 30 or so devices with support for Wi-Fi 6. Previously I did buy a few new devices to get 5GHz support from an ac router, after I moved to a location that had very poor 2.4Ghz connectivity. It can happen but it’s rare, I’d say?
gamblor956 6y ago
I know plenty of people that get along just fine with their 802.11b routers. And even a 10+ year old b/g router can handle 4k streaming.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- theptip 6y ago
  You're both making observations about different segmentatis of the market. For some gamers, latency (both %-ile and long-tail) is incredibly important -- in particular FPS / MOBA / fighting games. Upgrading every few years to stay on the cutting edge can make a notable improvement to these consumers, though I suspect routers are a bit less rapidly changing that things like CPUs and graphics cards. Think of these like the luxury smartphone users that will get value from upgrading their iPhone annually. For consumers that just watch Netflix (even at 4k), latency is irrelevant and you just need the bandwidth to be high enough; for these usecases, sure, a 10-year old router is fine. This is the consumer that keeps their Android phone for 2-3 years until it breaks, and only then upgrades. I don't think the GP was claiming that everyone needs to upgrade frequently, just that for some consumers it makes sense. Both segments can coexist, and so it's valid for different products/companies to tailor their offerings to one or both. It's pretty clear that you shouldn't buy Google products if you want to set-and-forget for 10 years. But if you're going to upgrade to the newest revision of smart-home gadget in less than 5 years anyway, then Google's product-ADD isn't a particularly relevant negative to you. Definitely a factor to make sure that consumers are aware of when purchasing though!
  - krageon 6y ago
    > For some gamers, latency (both %-ile and long-tail) is incredibly important I've been on a reliable average 7ms and peak 9ms latency for twelve years. It's not necessary to replace your router hardware to get low latencies.
    - lstamour 6y ago
      That’s not on Wi-Fi is it? Or your router is in the same room as your device, and it’s the only device using the signal? I agree you shouldn’t rip out 5e cables to install 6e if what you have works for you and there aren’t any substantial improvements. To that end, I’ve personally skipped Wi-Fi 6 and will wait for 6E before considering an upgrade. Even then, I’d like to have at minimum 3 devices that support Wi-Fi 6 before I upgrade. I’ve two such devices right now, so it’s not out of the question for me. I’m in favour of keeping devices automatically updated even years later, but I suspect the only economical way of doing so is emulating devices in VMs, a giant test suite and automatic security update testing (no humans required beyond reviewing code diffs). But setting up that kind of automated testing infrastructure is a high bar for most companies, so it’s cheaper to put the cost on the consumer to consume again within 3-5 years for the next product update lifecycle...

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago

You need to replace all of your devices, too, in order to take advantage of those new WiFi specs. Do you buy all new devices when you buy a new WiFi router? I don’t.

lstamour 6y ago
Right now I’m waiting to buy a new router even though I do have 2 of 30 or so devices with support for Wi-Fi 6. Previously I did buy a few new devices to get 5GHz support from an ac router, after I moved to a location that had very poor 2.4Ghz connectivity. It can happen but it’s rare, I’d say?

gamblor956 6y ago

I know plenty of people that get along just fine with their 802.11b routers. And even a 10+ year old b/g router can handle 4k streaming.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
theptip 6y ago
You're both making observations about different segmentatis of the market. For some gamers, latency (both %-ile and long-tail) is incredibly important -- in particular FPS / MOBA / fighting games. Upgrading every few years to stay on the cutting edge can make a notable improvement to these consumers, though I suspect routers are a bit less rapidly changing that things like CPUs and graphics cards. Think of these like the luxury smartphone users that will get value from upgrading their iPhone annually. For consumers that just watch Netflix (even at 4k), latency is irrelevant and you just need the bandwidth to be high enough; for these usecases, sure, a 10-year old router is fine. This is the consumer that keeps their Android phone for 2-3 years until it breaks, and only then upgrades. I don't think the GP was claiming that everyone needs to upgrade frequently, just that for some consumers it makes sense. Both segments can coexist, and so it's valid for different products/companies to tailor their offerings to one or both. It's pretty clear that you shouldn't buy Google products if you want to set-and-forget for 10 years. But if you're going to upgrade to the newest revision of smart-home gadget in less than 5 years anyway, then Google's product-ADD isn't a particularly relevant negative to you. Definitely a factor to make sure that consumers are aware of when purchasing though!
- krageon 6y ago
  > For some gamers, latency (both %-ile and long-tail) is incredibly important I've been on a reliable average 7ms and peak 9ms latency for twelve years. It's not necessary to replace your router hardware to get low latencies.
  - lstamour 6y ago
    That’s not on Wi-Fi is it? Or your router is in the same room as your device, and it’s the only device using the signal? I agree you shouldn’t rip out 5e cables to install 6e if what you have works for you and there aren’t any substantial improvements. To that end, I’ve personally skipped Wi-Fi 6 and will wait for 6E before considering an upgrade. Even then, I’d like to have at minimum 3 devices that support Wi-Fi 6 before I upgrade. I’ve two such devices right now, so it’s not out of the question for me. I’m in favour of keeping devices automatically updated even years later, but I suspect the only economical way of doing so is emulating devices in VMs, a giant test suite and automatic security update testing (no humans required beyond reviewing code diffs). But setting up that kind of automated testing infrastructure is a high bar for most companies, so it’s cheaper to put the cost on the consumer to consume again within 3-5 years for the next product update lifecycle...