Free and Open Source Software

Hey, I thought of mentioning, but got sidetracked and forgot. Most of the dozen or so consumer grade routers I have hacked around with seem to have less than optimal placement of DC stepdown converters located around the processor and radio circuit blocks. I mean, they appear to be optimised for radio as the primary design constraint, not for what is best for the DC converter operation. They tend to place electrolytic capacitors in close proximity to circuit blocks that get quite warm. I can't say how often capacitors are creating problems, but it would not surprise me if this is the cause of many issues for many people after a year or two. I can say that I had problems with a cable company provided modem a few years ago. It had an obvious leaky cap and several that were around 25% out of spec, along with a couple identical parts that were around 5% out as I would expect with my typical shelf stock. Replacing all of them fixed the modem.