How can i extend the life of my Wifi Router in 2022

 

WiFi technology is progressing year on year for the last 2 decades and has progressed as per following 6 generations (as of April 2022) :

(1) 802.11a – 5 Ghz band
(2) 802.11b – 2.4 Gband

(3) 802.11g – 2.4 Ghz band

(4) 802.11n – Wifi 4. Both 2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz band

(5) 802.11ac – Wifi 5 Wave 1 and Wave 2 . Features Triband devices (2.4G + 2x5G)
(6) 802.11ax – Wifi 6, 6e and Wave 2 . Features upto quad band (2.4G + 2x5G + Ghz). This generation can be considered a major improvement
(7) And yes Wifi 7 is already under development …

As such it can be expected that every 3-4 years there is a new generation of WiFi technology introduced in the market. Yet the core purpose and capabilities of Wifi have remained same I.e share the broadband home internet bandwidth among an increasing number of internet enabled devices. It has not progressed to a point where it can challenge or substitute wired Ethernet (which has also progressed from 1G to 2.5/5 and 10G Ethernet for home use, but still 1G Ethernet is mainstream). And practically client speeds are nowhere near specification speeds (both typically are 1/3rd to 1/4th at best). And only now power users are looking for a subset of enterprise features for the home (VLAN, VPNs and internet privacy, Link aggregation, Multi-WAN, Multiple SSIDs, etc).

On the flip side, a bulk of consumer devices still support the legacy 2.4G band only (uses less power, is battery friendly, cheap and ubiquitous) and in most cases the best compute/communication device (PC, laptop, smartphone) supports an older than current state of art generation and limited to no more than 2x2 MIMO wheras your router may support 3x3, 4x4, or even 8x8 MIMO. To make matters worse despite the prevalence of mesh and multiple AP systems, the range of single wifi device is only reducing (6G < 5G < 2.4G) which is a big issue for simple home networks where a single device is highly preferred by consumers ( to some extent this creates a desire to upgrade)

So in such a reasonably quick evolution cycle, its very likely that every 3-5 years, your may be tempted to send your existing home Wifi Router or AP to a landfill (yes most cannot reuse and most will not buy it in the seconds market ) and jump to a next best thing in the market. However as it stands not every device needs high wifi speeds. Even though home fixed internet speeds typically cap off till 1 Gbps is most markets, there is rarely a case that one needs a speed in excess of 25 mbps per device. Its only when the total number of bandwidth hungry devices increases (like multiple family members using high speed applications independently at same time), do we really need high speed connections and high overall capacity wifi routers.

WiFi Router OEMS traditionally have focused more on hardware and not software. Their hardware evolution follows generations and technology advancements (new SoCs), but software remains same. To make matters worse on software side, in the last decade few WiFi OEMs have being caught planting, retaining or ignoring backdoors in their router software with government agencies rumored to be the driver behind these indiscretions. In some countries, the laws require OEMs to cooperate with government agencies in the interest of national security and this provision is prone to be abused by rogue governments and secret service agencies. Security also is a revolving door with hackers finding newer and newer vulnerabilities to exploit every software, and until an OEM routinely patches firmware for a router during its life-cycle, the consumer will be exposed to the risks. Also the all-in-one Home gateway device provided as operator locked CPE to broadband customers is rarely updated, is closed source (unknown whether ISPs control it some lesser known factory), and has unpolished features and therefore considered a big security and privacy risk by many security-conscious users.

Their is potentially a way out of all these problems i.e. to flash a FOSS firmware (like OpenWRT, DD-WRT, FreshTomato, etc) on COTS hardware routers and get rid of the proprietary firmware limitations and security vulnerabilities:

1. It will typically bring a newer or latest version of Linux kernel and networking platform software which ensure all known security vulnerabilities have been addressed from the date the OEM firmware was released.

2. As the firmware is based on FOSS, the code has been reviewed by thousands of developers who will simply not allow a backdoor, or known defect/vulnerability to slip through or make it possible for any governmental-agency/corporate as a block to influence.

3. It will incorporate latest improvements in algorithms and therefore potentially bring higher performance, coverage etc

4. Because development and build is a constant process, new features (including enterprise grade like VLAN, VPN, Multi-WAN or Mesh algorithms etc) will get added even in entry level hardware greatly extending the usable lifecycle of the hardware (consider that only a minority of users actually need an upgrade to latest Wifi generation gear)

The only handicap that this may bring is throughput reduction AND higher CPU use (oinly the former is usually visible to end user) in areas like hardware acceleration of NAT, encryption, etc which happens due to the proprietary nature of *most SOC hardware and drivers. This may increase the operating temperature of hardware device (it has not being designed to operate at 80-90% CPU usage consistently and therefore presents new cooling challenges that OEM has not anticipated/addressed) reducing its life. Apart from this aspect upgrading to FOSS firmware seems a better option in every way compared to depending on OEM supplied closed source firmware.

So unless all you want to do is add to the landfill a few years down the line, you may consider before purchasing a new Wifi Router whether it will or can be supported by FOSS firmware like OpenWRT, DD-WRT or Advanced Tomato. It is one way of extending the shelf life of router. And almost all these Router firmware use Linux and the software ecosystem around this OS. And those who are planning to discard their existing routers, may first consider consider trying out a suitable FOSS firmware to see if it can extend your router life and continue meeting your revised need. And for the hyper sensitive, you may out-rightly buy a device that supports these FOSS firmware and use the FOSS firmware from day 1 ignoring the warranty.

- Suman Kumar Luthra @ APRC Telecom Special Interest Group