Everyone is interested (hopefully) in conserving electricity and saving money on their power bills. Any gadgets around the house that tend to stay on 24 hours a day, like network routers, are obvious suspects to question when looking for sources of wasteful energy consumption.
Fortunately, routers don't consume a lot of power. Wireless routers use the most, particularly those newer models with multiple Wi-Fi antennas, because these radios need a certain level of power to stay connected. The Linksys WRT610 (see right), for example, utilizes two radios for dual-band wireless support, yet it draws just 18 watts of power.
Assuming you leave the WRT610 running in dual-band mode 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, it will result in 3 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per week added to your electric bill. Costs vary depending where you live, but typically the WRT610 and similar wireless routers cost no more than $1-$2 (USD) per month to run.
→ See also - Finding / Fixing Home Power Hogs→ See also - 802.11v Wi-Fi Saves Power
Linksys WRT610N Simultaneous Dual-N Band Wireless Router - Photo: www.linksys.com
Nice Article, but it is still good to power off these equipment when not in use to save electricity (read Global Warming) and life of equipment.
Wireless routers and networks use the little amount of power they do because they are supposed to be left on. The vast majority of people -do- leave their routers on, but some people turn theirs off, thinking they are saving money, when actually they are throwing it away.
When your wireless router is connected to your local exchange, they automatically monitor your connection, and allocate you a set amount of bandwidth. Bandwidth costs a lot more money than the electricity needed to run a router.
For example, if you only connect for 5 hours out of 24 each day, and turn your router off in the meantime, the exchange will allocate you *less* bandwidth than you pay for each month, in order to give it to the customers who stay connected.
This means your internet speed will be considerably slower than if you had left your router on (and I mean considerably- my internet speed fell to between 1500-1800kb/s from the 8Mb I paid for, simply because I began to turn off my router at nights – that’s down to below a quarter!).
Global warming is an issue, of course it is – but it is the fault of the exchange, rather than your own personal fault, if they insist on taking away a service that you have already paid for – effectively punishing you for saving electricity.
Pressure should perhaps be put on exchanges to provide 100% of the internet speed they promise you when you sign a contract.
Until then, however, you should always leave your router on.
Great article.
Josh, however, is quite wrong. While some ISPs use on demand throttling; it is exactly that….ON DEMAND. Any long term fluctuations in banwidth are not related to turning a router off or leaving it on at night. In fact; in the long run, turning off a cable or DSL modem at night and having it reestablish its connection with the ISP could actually be beneficial to your connection.
-Michael
I work for virgin technical support & you should always leave it switched on, unless your out of the country for a week or so. By constanty switching on & off you are causing the router to re sync with the exchange & within a few months you’ll be spending £30+ on a new router. In respect to the speed slowing down this shouldnt happen unless it’s within the first 10 days as the line fluctuates to find the best stable rate, but switching off & on can cause intermittent problems down the line which also causes issues with speed. If your router is switched on at all times your ISP can tell if there’s an intermittent problem but if you switch it off at nights you’ll need to monitor for 48 hours before your ISP can determine a fault.
Global Warming?
Don’t think it is caused by human activity. And hundreds of climate scientists are now beginning to agree. A Phd in Physics at Princeton wrote a great article in First Things about this recently.
Thousands disagree I know but politics is involved here folks – big time.
wsa