Earlier in 2026, U.S. cybersecurity agencies disrupted a growing network of compromised consumer routers that were being used as part of a botnet by Russian intelligence services. Routers have been exploited for nefarious purposes, to steal additional information such as login credentials, to intercept and harvest Internet traffic including sensitive data, and to target other networks and devices, including government, military, and critical infrastructure.
The NSA then issued a warning to everyone; restart your router. It turns out that a simple restart or restart can disrupt or eliminate temporary malware and reset connections that attackers could exploit. Failing to do so can lead to a host of problems, from slow connections and device memory leaks to potentially compromised networks. Basically, if you never restart your router, you may experience a lot of technical issues, security issues, or your Internet and Wi-Fi connections will degrade over time.
Restarting your router isn’t just about security, it’s also good for performance. Like a computer restart, it clears temporary caches, restarts security protocols and processes, and resets various connections, including the external outgoing connection and the Wi-Fi channel selection process. Restarting your modem at the same time is not a bad idea either. The biggest downside is the small interruption to your online connection while everything resets.
How often should you restart your router?
The National Security Agency advises restarting your router at least once a month, but more often than not is fine, whether it’s weekly or daily, as long as it’s a consistent event. Most modern routers have an administrative setting that allows you to automate the process. The router automatically restarts during off-peak hours, such as early in the morning when everyone in your household is asleep.
It’s also a good idea to enable or enable the automatic updates setting, which should be available through your router’s administrative dashboard. Enabling this option will allow the router to intermittently check for, download, and install official firmware updates when they become available. These updates are important because they contain security fixes, vulnerability fixes, and performance updates or improvements for bugs and other issues.
If your router is old enough that some of this information doesn’t apply (for example, if it doesn’t have automatic reboot or update settings), it may be time to replace your router entirely and upgrade to a newer, more secure model. It’s really not safe to use a router that no longer has firmware support, and many companies, from Netgear to Linksys, have discontinued support for older models. If you have an affected model, you should upgrade it as soon as possible. Recently, the FBI warned Americans to replace several old Wi-Fi routers because hackers could exploit outdated firmware and unpatched vulnerabilities. In these cases, a quick reboot won’t fix the problem because the root issues aren’t fixed by security updates.
Don’t confuse a restart or restart with a factory reset
Restarting your devices is such a common solution to hardware and software problems that it’s become a meme: “Have you tried turning your device off and on again?” Computers of all kinds tend to benefit from a reboot because of the way the process forces almost every protocol and application or system event to restart. The same goes for networking equipment such as routers and modems. That’s why it’s always a good idea to know when to unplug and reset your router to resolve a wide variety of problems.
But there is another similar process, called factory reset, which erases all system and user data and restores factory default settings. as if you had just taken the router out of its box for the first time. A factory reset can be just as helpful, if not more so, for performance and software issues, but it’s not always necessary.
You will lose all of your personalized settings, including your local Wi-Fi settings, SSID information, and password, if and when you reset your router to factory settings, so keep that in mind. This is a good backup plan when one or two reboots don’t fix the major issues you’re having.
