My Belkin router has needed rebooting twice in the last two weeks in order to restore wireless connectivity. I’ve experienced this before – I’ve had 4 or 5 routers before, and every one of them (except both Linksys, which were dead as soon as I got them) has, after a year or so, gotten to the point where it needs frequent rebooting. The rebooting gets more and more frequent, until eventually I give up and replace the damn thing.
For some strange reason, I decided to give Linksys another chance, but this time I decided to pay a few extra bucks and buy it from the local Staples. That way, if and when it craps out, I can take it back. Providing it behaves like every other Linksys I’ve bought, and is noticably faulty in the first 14 days.
I plugged it in, and set it up as a copy of the existing one. Even copied the MAC address. Unplugged the existing one, plugged this in, rebooted both the router and the cable modem, and the new router got the same IP as the old one had (thank goodness) and everything seemed to be working exactly the same. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.