You may be wondering what happens if you have the router turned on for a long time. It is normal that we turn off the appliances when we do not use it. For example, we only turn on the television when we are really going to see it or the computer when we are going to work with it. But the router? Weeks or months can go by without us turning it off. That is good? Can something happen? We talk about it in this article.
Is it a good idea to leave the router on?
Several aspects must be mentioned. An obvious one is energy consumption. Any device that we have plugged in will consume, even if it is little. But, on the other hand, there is the issue of security. We can even mention the logical wear and tear of having a device on for so long.
Router power consumption
Surely the first thing that comes to mind is how much the router consumes on and if that makes it a problem to leave it connected for so long. It will depend on each device and, logically, on the price of electricity (which you already know goes up and down practically every day). But we can get a general idea.
Without going into consumption meters and technical data such as the power of each device, more or less we can say that it consumes 0.1 KWh every day (keeping it on 24 hours a day). More or less, at the average price of the last few months of electricity, that means that we are going to spend approximately €0.50 each month, which means about 6 euros per year. Of course, as long as it is turned on 24 hours a day, 365 days a week.
Is it worth constantly turning it off and only turning it on when you are going to use it? You're not really going to notice anything on the bill. Even if you turned it off for half the year, it will mean that you would pay about 3 euros less.
Security
A different case is security. It is a fact that the router is the device that we have at home that is most exposed to possible intruders. Especially this happens if we live in a building surrounded by many people. They can find our Wi-Fi seamlessly and try to launch attacks.
Let's take the example that you are going to go on vacation or you are going to spend a few days or a season away from home. If you leave the router on, a hypothetical attacker will have a lot of time to be able to exploit a vulnerability or even get into your network, without you realizing it.
In this case, being strict with security, it might be convenient for you to turn it off, especially if you are going to spend a lot of time outside. Perhaps in that period a vulnerability appears just for that model you have, an attacker wants to try and you are not at home to update the firmware and correct the problem.
Wear
It also stands to reason that the longer the router is on, the more wear and tear there is going to be. And yes, after all, any device has a useful life that will be greater or less. If you buy a mobile, you remove the battery and leave it off for 10 years, when you turn it on and put a new battery in it, it normally works correctly. Now, will a mobile work in 10 years if you are using it every day? Possibly not.
However, routers are devices that are designed to run constantly. They have a very long useful life and the normal thing is that you end up changing it simply because another new technology has appeared or you want to have a device with more features, rather than really because it stops working. But yes, it is clear that if you keep it off when you do not use it, it is wear and tear that you save. But we return to the same as in the case of electricity consumption: it will be something insignificant.
In short, we can say that except for security reasons if you are going to spend a lot of time outside, it is normal that it is not convenient to turn off the router. You can even have certain problems, for example if you turn it off overnight and an automatic update or backup that you have is cut off.