We spend the day connected to the Internet and everything in our house is. The vacuum cleaner, the speakers, the light bulbs, the television, the alarm clock. That is why you should think carefully before turning off the router if you want to leave your entire house without connection for many hours a day.
When to turn off the router?
There are times when we must turn off the device. Or at least reboot. For example, if there is a connection problem and we want to solve it in the most basic way possible: we turn off, disconnect, turn on again after a few minutes. But we also turn it off if we want to change the IP, for example, since this is the best way.
In what other cases? If you are going to spend weeks or months away from home, you can turn it off. But it depends. Because if you have video surveillance systems connected through the Internet or you access the cameras or you access fire or water warnings, it does not make sense. Turning it off can prevent hacking while you’re not there, but you should weigh it in your specific case and depending on the type of devices you have connected and the use you are going to give them.
And if I want to save?
If what you want is not to have devices on at night to avoid the famous phantom consumption and save on the electricity bill every month, you may have considered turning off the router at night. From the help website of Naturgy, electricity and gas marketer, they explain that there is no fixed consumption for the router and it depends on the company with which you have contracted Internet. But you can make an approximate calculation of what you consume.
The consumption of a router is between 5 and 10 W so that per day there would be an approximate consumption, rounding up to the maximum, of 240 W. If you turn it off at night it would be seven or eight hours. In other words, we would save 80 W per day or, what is the same, 2.4 Kw per month according to Naturgy’s calculations. It will depend on the price of electricity and each moment, but we would save about 79 cents per month if we turn off the router at night. Less than ten euros a year.
Worth? It depends on each one. There are many other devices that consume more than the router and that you could turn off (or use a smart plug) and that, in addition, affect the so-called phantom consumption. Appliances that you are not using but continue to consume while they are in sleep mode. In the case of the router, consumption is minimal and allows us to have all the devices connected in homes that are increasingly intelligent.
problems turning it off
Homes are becoming smarter and have more “smart” options and turning off the router at night does not allow these functions to continue working. If your video surveillance camera is connected to WiFi, for example, or your baby monitor camera. The same happens if you have home automation control from your mobile phone: you will need the Internet to turn on the lights, to raise the blinds, to make the alarm clock sound…
But also, not only at the level of use it is uncomfortable. It is also at a technical level. The updates or revisions of these devices are usually done overnight and if we turn it off, this update will not be done. In addition, spending all day turning off and on a device that is designed to work for weeks or months without you disconnecting it reduces its useful life. So you will only make it work worse.
It is annoying and inconvenient to have to start the day by turning on the router if practically everything around us is connected. And, as you can see from the paragraphs above, unplugging it has hardly any benefit and nothing happens to keeping it plugged in.
