topic Curiosity corner in Everything else

Curiosity corner

pvmb — Sun, 07 Dec 2025 11:54:52 GMT

Does your chewing gum lose its flavour on the bed-post overnight?

Back in the day we were always being told to "NOT turn your routers/(modems) off overnight. Because..." - on pain of losing our ADSL etc. download speed. Now, (controversial) I realised this well worn advice was simply incorrect and you could turn them off overnight with no loss of download speed, contrary to the then current expert advice(!) - albeit it might possibly cause reliability issues and you might miss an overnight router firmware update.

Now that analogue transmission (and modems!) are disappearing into the rear view mirror of history, to be replaced by the fully digital communications network, what do people do with their routers overnight - not to mention ONTs.

Currently I always turn my router off overnight but leave the ONT on (for no particular reason).

What do other people do?

Re: Curiosity corner

jab1 — Sun, 07 Dec 2025 11:59:49 GMT

The only time my ONT and router get turned is when I'm going to be away for an extended time - like over the Xmas period or other 'holidays'.

Re: Curiosity corner

MisterW — Sun, 07 Dec 2025 12:35:12 GMT

TBH I don't even do that these days! I used to but with the convenience of remote access to all the SMART stuff e.g heating control and Smart lighting, my router & ONT are on 24/365.

Assuming 10w for a router and about 3w for the ONT gives an annual leccy cost in the order of £30. Its probably worth that to avoid any unreliablity of the hardware that may be caused by turning it off.

Re: Curiosity corner

Anonymous — Sun, 07 Dec 2025 23:07:56 GMT

It depends if you have a VoIP line? Powering down either device means that a VoIP ('landline') becomes unavailable.

The following is opinion (but based on some superficial testing)...

For someone calling that number (whilst unavailable), the unavailabilty of the phone number may be reported differently, depending.

Different chewing gum, perhaps.

Re: Curiosity corner

spile — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 07:48:22 GMT

I don’t turn my electricity and gas off when I go on holiday either.

Re: Curiosity corner

Champnet — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 09:01:04 GMT

..........Or the water.

Having done it once and came home to a flooded house.

Re: Curiosity corner

198kHz — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 13:35:55 GMT

My router is on 24/7, as callers to my digital landline would get no tone if it was off.

Also, daily switching off and on would likely impair the long term reliability, while saving very little in electricity costs.