Renting routers?


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Every 2 years I find myself wanting a new router... Is there a service that rents routers? I know some ISPs package routers and modems but mine doesn't need a modem so they don't' offer this.

 

playing the ebay reselling game is more trouble than it's worth. 

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Every 2 years I find myself wanting a new router... Is there a service that rents routers? I know some ISPs package routers and modems but mine doesn't need a modem so they don't' offer this.

 

playing the ebay reselling game is more trouble than it's worth. 

 

Why you want to rent it?  You can buy it from retail stores such as Walmart, Best Buy, etc...  you keep it. If you get new one, you can sell the old one as long as it works... otherwise give it to some company for recycling.

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generally by the time you are done with your renting term you have bought the equipment several times over.  It is tech, tech goes down in price rapidly esp when a shiny new one comes out.

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as cheap as a consumer router is i do not see anyone that would rent one that would be cost effective. being that you can buy one for around $100 for a decent one and it should last you a few years. The one i have now is running on nearly 3 years old and it works great. (but i am running DD-WRT so it has a lot more features)

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Yea, reason I want to rent is I want the shiny $200 router. and in 1 year I will want the next $200 router. If I rent, maybe I can get it for <$100 per year. Sure I won't own the equipment but I get to upgrade as often as I want.

 

I imagine this is a horrible business case, wish someone made it work though. 

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Some stores offer rental agreements on hardware but it will cost you a lot of money per month and you'll be tied into long contracts as these types of agreements are for businesses that are buying in loads of IT. You will save money by buying a new router every year.

 

I would say something that's $200 you'd probably have to pay $15 a month for the router and you will be stuck with it for at least 2 years.. so.. that's $360. 

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Yea, reason I want to rent is I want the shiny $200 router. and in 1 year I will want the next $200 router. If I rent, maybe I can get it for <$100 per year. Sure I won't own the equipment but I get to upgrade as often as I want.

 

I imagine this is a horrible business case, wish someone made it work though.

Don't buy consumer trash, Spend the same money on some enterprise grade cisco gear on ebay. you'll get infinitely more bang for your buck.
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Lets use one of rent a centers electronics deals they have going on right now.  12.99 a week for a nintendo ds.  The ds retails for about $100.  It will take you about 10 weeks to pay for that out right, the term is probably for a year to rent it.  13*52=676.  Yep it makes a lot of sense to rent it for a year...now imagine that on a $200 product. 

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"Every 2 years I find myself wanting a new router.."

Why exactly? What features are you gaining in the new device that your old device does not do.. Are you talking more wireless speed, or actual networking features? etc..

If we can determine what your looking for in that shiny new $200 router vs your 2 year old what was $200 router.. Maybe we can find a cheaper way to scratch the itch as they say.

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Renting places include "Service charges" so that's where they make their money.

For it to be worth it to rent it, it would have to be costing you less than $7 a month for a $200 device. If you are paying $10/month then you're gonna be paying more than it's worth after some time. In 1 year, your $200 router is only worth $80-140 at most.

You don't need the newest one all the time no matter what the marketing team says, especially on routers. 802.11N came out some years ago and 802.11AC just started to get going now and will be in play for another 3-5yrs. You wont get much more "speed" by getting AC if your laptops are still G or N. So unless you plan on upgrading those every year too it wont make a single difference.

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I'm still using my 7 year old WRT54GL with Tomato on it. Works fine. Find a router you like, has good hardware and you are knowledgeable about, consider it an investment.

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Every 2 years I find myself wanting a new router... Is there a service that rents routers? I know some ISPs package routers and modems but mine doesn't need a modem so they don't' offer this.

 

playing the ebay reselling game is more trouble than it's worth. 

 

It's just not financially viable.

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I always assumed the routers available in the rest of world where basically the same ones in Canada.  Here, you can buy a $30 router and have it last indefinitely.  Aside from rare electric problems, there is no "wear and tear" on a router. It doesn't move. There are no moving parts. How do you guys wear out your router? Aside from the usually technological updates (a to B to G to N) there really hasn't been a need to for 5 years now.  In each case i have seen with people "needing to upgrade" there was no need at all, in their mind they needed to but in actual usage, upgrading made no difference.

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I think he wants to constantly play with the "high end" consumer routers all of the time which may have added features that the low end routers don't have, or have better network capabilities/throughput.  I haven't seen a $30 router support a gigabit internet/wan connection for example.

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I think he wants to constantly play with the "high end" consumer routers all of the time which may have added features that the low end routers don't have, or have better network capabilities/throughput.  I haven't seen a $30 router support a gigabit internet/wan connection for example.

this is more where I am at.... I am not claiming this to be rational or necessary in any way. Playing with new routers and electronics is how I get my kick. 

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Nobody rents routers because nobody needs to replace them every year or so, if you want to play with the bleeding edge every year you'll have to pay for it.

 

Past a certain point you won't get anything new, I could replace my WNDR3800 with a brand new router and I wouldn't gain a single thing due to the software being the same.

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I could replace my WNDR3800 with a brand new router and I wouldn't gain a single thing due to the software being the same.

No -- there are many models newer than yours that would get you quite a bit. For starters yours is N600, the 4000 is N750, the 4500 is N900, the 6300 is 1750ac the R7000 is 1900, etc.

That is not nothing ;) Also the 3800 is EOL, so prob time you got a new one just for support/updates to firmware which what last was jan of 2013? http://www.netgear.com/landing/en-us/EOLBulletin.aspx

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My connection is ~4Mbps (A 486 could handle my routing), and I don't use any of the NAS functionality so it's not like an included hard drive would help. That and I run OpenWRT, so official firmware updates don't matter to me. A new router might offer AC wifi, but I don't have any AC devices and I prefer wired anyway.

 

If/when my internet connection gets upgraded to proper speeds (Government is trying their hardest to ensure that doesn't happen), then maybe I'll consider a new router, because at the moment maxing out my bandwidth only results in about 10% CPU usage (Having it generate the graph takes more CPU)

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Since when is your internet connection the only thing you do with wifi? Now I agree if you don't do anything like streaming or moving files around your local network and your current wifi is greater than your internet bandwidth then sure there is little reason to upgrade.

If your on a 4Mbps connection internet connection and don't do anything local, why did you fork over money for a dual band N? Freaking B router would handle 4Mbits per second ;)

So why did you upgrade your router before your 3800, which if you bought it when was new was prob pushing $200, now you can get them for under $100 ;)

But we are on the same page - nobody is going to rent a router, not in a way that the user would see any benefit to doing it, it would clearly cost them more than just buying new when they wanted it. And either putting the old one on a shelf, using it as AP in other part of the house.. Maybe add wifi to the shed out back ;) Or selling it to recoup some of the cost of the new one.

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Yea, reason I want to rent is I want the shiny $200 router. and in 1 year I will want the next $200 router. If I rent, maybe I can get it for <$100 per year. Sure I won't own the equipment but I get to upgrade as often as I want.

 

I imagine this is a horrible business case, wish someone made it work though. 

Typically cable or phone companies that allow you to rent routers have cheap lower end models. Even if they did have what you want they more likely would charge about $10 a month which is $240 in two years. You are better off buying one and reselling or recycling it.

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Since when is your internet connection the only thing you do with wifi? Now I agree if you don't do anything like streaming or moving files around your local network and your current wifi is greater than your internet bandwidth then sure there is little reason to upgrade.

If your on a 4Mbps connection internet connection and don't do anything local, why did you fork over money for a dual band N? Freaking B router would handle 4Mbits per second ;)

So why did you upgrade your router before your 3800, which if you bought it when was new was prob pushing $200, now you can get them for under $100 ;)

But we are on the same page - nobody is going to rent a router, not in a way that the user would see any benefit to doing it, it would clearly cost them more than just buying new when they wanted it. And either putting the old one on a shelf, using it as AP in other part of the house.. Maybe add wifi to the shed out back ;) Or selling it to recoup some of the cost of the new one.

It was actually because I reflashed my WRT54GL without reading that the newer build wouldn't work properly (It had like 30KB flash free, couldn't save any of its settings), and the 3800 was the hardware recommended at the time (Used as the reference for the cerowrt project, etc.)

I also wanted to get off the 2.4Ghz band onto 5Ghz, and I wanted fast WiFi <> LAN data (As well as an inbuilt gigabit switch). And having the extra flash space available lets me put more apps onto it (I can now run a DHCPv6 server, WRT54GL couldn't, etc.)

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Hello, 

Don't buy consumer trash, Spend the same money on some enterprise grade cisco gear on ebay. you'll get infinitely more bang for your buck.

On the software side, more than 50% of the things you do on some "enterprise grade cisco gear on ebay" can be done with a pfsense box and cost you a lot less. And out of the 50%, consumer's wont problably use 10%!

Now hardware realiable? Thats another issue. But do you really want noise/heat/etc building up in your room/living room/etc?

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