I’ve had an old D-Link DI-614+ Wireless Broadband Router since 2003 or so. Its ticked along perfectly for the last five years, though since last week has started to show signs of wanting to go kaput. It had occasionally cut out on me in the past, but never so persistently.

Just before heading out the door to Best Buy to pick up a new one I figured I’d check D-Link to see if there were any firmware updates. Sure enough the last update was in 2006. Dowload to desktop, upload to router, reboot, and.. suddenly, no more problems. In fact, I seem to be getting better throughput than before. And the router’s clock now works. And signal strength is suddenly 100% everywhere in the house.

Sheesh, if I had thought to do this before I never would have wasted money on the Hawking Range Extender (which also required its own firmware upgrade).

So, fifty bucks saved and lesson learned. When in doubt, upgrade the firmware.