eli5: why does turning my router off and turning it back on again make my internet so much faster?
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So first off, if your setup is slow/lagging and rebooting it fixes that… There’s likely something wrong, or someone is using up your internet bandwidth.
THAT said, the ELI5 part… Restarting the router kills all the connections and basically reconnects everything from scratch. It clears erroneous information, fixes conflicts, clears memory buffers of possible issues. There are a lot of ‘moving parts’ in networking, and some of that stuff isn’t auto-correcting.
Think of it like… counting to 100, and you get confused where you were at and miss some numbers. Starting over is the best way to ‘reset’ and ensure you counted all the numbers.
Loads of different reasons, if it’s ADSL then one of them could be:
Restarting your router resets the connection. ADSL is made up of loads of channels simultaneously connected (think like loads of dial up modems) running on different frequencies.
As your modem struggles to maintain a solid connection on one frequency that “modem” is shut down. The frequencies coincide with LW and MW radio along with interference from things like water pumps and Christmas lights and just about anything 😋
Over time it will discard the noisy channels to try and get a more stable connection and your speed will decrease.
If you have a good solid connection then the off/on trick won’t make a difference in this scenario.
Bonus: one of the reasons your broadband company asks you to plug into your master socket (at least in the UK) is that it disconnects your internal house wiring which, even if not faulty, often is working as an aerial pulling noise onto your connection.
Because home routers are trash. It’s a commodity product that only needs to last for a few years. The code is super sloppy, memory leaks, etc. We had a Cisco 6500 core switch that wasn’t rebooted for 13 YEARS! But that cost $500K 15-20 years ago. You get what you pay for.
I’m not so sure my switch improves also but i think it might even though I heard it shouldn’t matter. With my pesky Firestick about 2 or 3 times per year I’m forced to unplug it regardless because the signal won’t get through my receiver….
This can be true with shit routers. My Ubiquiti EdgeRouter shows no signs of degradation after months of continuous use and only gets restarted if there’s an update (or a power failure). That said, I have a fibre connection and they seem quite stable. ADSL/VDSL modems needed more rebooting in my experience.
Most likely you have a lot of devices connecting to your router. When you reset your router, the devices reconnect, but they don’t do it immediately (they only do so as they need to). So for the short time while the device you’re using has reconnected, but other devices have not, it feels like your internet is faster.
If you can’t upgrade your actual internet speed, you might have to change some router settings to reduce the amount that some devices are using, or remove those devices from the network entirely.
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