Turning off routers

[floyd77]

And there you have it for me,a chance of a fire is good enough for me to switch it of.Money does not come into it where safety is concerned,for me.

 

There is a chance you could be struck by lightening and catch fire. You should probably never leave your home either.

[walkertelecoms]

You're more likely to have a coconut hit you on the head.

[AlexAtkin]

And of course offices have hundreds of PCs, laptops and monitors, routers and other network hardware that are at best put into stand-by at night. All the power is left on, the power bricks are still connected, but we don't have an epidemic of office buildings burning down.

 

Which when you also factor in the poor quality PSUs used in a lot of office PCs, it shows just how unlikely this really is.

 

The danger is mostly Chinese imports that haven't passed British or EU testing.

[sedith]

You turn the entire house off at the consumer unit then, every time you leave the house or go to bed?

 

Seriously - switching the router on and off is going to stress the power supply more and may even increase the chance of a fire as opposed to leaving it on all the time.

 

Stress the power supply???? ... unbelievable ... I'll get my coat!

[BluePolo]

When people complain about breakdowns, the normal thing they say is "my TV/computer/whatever won't switch on" - not "it went off while I was watching/using it"

 

This is because most electronic breakdowns happen at switch-on, not whilst the equipment is being used. As capacitors get their initial charge they take more current than when in use. Therefore this is when components are most likely to fail.

 

So yes, power supplies do get stressed.

 

Personally I've been repairing electronics on and off for getting on for 50 years, and this has been the case from when I started (with valves).

[Kidorry]

Why do people on here find it necessary to try to ridicule people who have a different perception of things, than they do.Sad.

[Guest]

Why do people on here find it necessary to try to ridicule people who have a different perception of things, than they do.Sad.

 

I don't think anyone is ridiculing anyone, telling you there is no reason to turn off your router and giving you plenty of reasons to show that your point of view is incorrect is not the same as ridiculing anyone.

 

It's a discussion forum, it's the same as people calling people they disagree with trolls just because they hold a different point of view.

 

Sad.

[Kidorry]

I don't think anyone is ridiculing anyone, telling you there is no reason to turn off your router and giving you plenty of reasons to show that your point of view is incorrect is not the same as ridiculing anyone.

 

It's a discussion forum, it's the same as people calling people they disagree with trolls just because they hold a different point of view.

 

Sad.

 

There you go.You are correct,in your opinion.

[AlexAtkin]

When people complain about breakdowns, the normal thing they say is "my TV/computer/whatever won't switch on" - not "it went off while I was watching/using it"

 

This is because most electronic breakdowns happen at switch-on, not whilst the equipment is being used. As capacitors get their initial charge they take more current than when in use. Therefore this is when components are most likely to fail.

 

So yes, power supplies do get stressed.

 

People refer to power cycling as stressing the PSU, but in reality only a PSU already deteriorating will fail during a power cycle.

 

The "stressing" is simply the act of expecting every component to work within specifications, which as they get older they likely will not. THEN powering up is likely to overload something and cause catastrophic failure, most commonly, when capacitors dry up.

 

A PSU that appears to be working fine can have very poorly functioning capacitors, you won't find out until you power cycle. In that sense, you likely WILL get a better life span by keeping things powered on as you are less likely to trigger those capacitors to completely fail, but they are still technically defective and its probably better they go suddenly during a power cycle than slowly start to fry whatever they are powering.

 

When I last dismantled my server to clean all the dust out, it wouldn't power back up afterwards. Why? Because some of the capacitors had failed, but until they were actually required to operate to their full specification, there were no symptoms at all, all voltages appeared to be stable before powering off and I could soft power off fine (which included the load of spinning up HDDs).

 

They will have been faulty for months maybe even years. It was clear from looking at them it hadn't "just" happened, they hadn't blown completely, there was no magic smoke, but they had leaked. So while there is no real merit to powering off every night, its probably a good idea to do so periodically as its better it fails while powering up than risking it going out-of-spec during use and potentially breaking something more seriously.

Edited March 28, 2015 by AlexAtkin

[Obelix]

Would you recommend leaving Christmas tree lights on when you go out or go to bed?

 

If you like seeing pretty lights then yes.

 

---------- Post added 29-03-2015 at 08:12 ----------

 

Stress the power supply???? ... unbelievable ... I'll get my coat!

 

Just becasue you find in incredible doesnt mean it's not true.

 

At switchone time a modern switchmode PSU places what is in effect a short circuit across the mains as the input capacitors are charged. This results in very high currents which only occur at switch on. Switchmode PSU's designed for high reliability environments are usually never turned off, or if they are as few times as possible.

 

---------- Post added 29-03-2015 at 08:14 ----------

 

There you go.You are correct,in your opinion.

 

He may well be correct in his opinion, but his also correct in fact.