Quote:
Originally Posted by Kushan
Not necessarily, depends what it's doing. It depends on the circumstances of the failures. Could be pushing the hardware too hard during a reboot, for example, which would explain why it isn't killing everything evenly.
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How do you propose software pushes hardware too hard during a reboot? If a router can't handle hitting 100% utilisation for a while without having a hardware failure that's a manufacturing issue.
Damage during reboot is more likely due to the voltage spike and trough when power is applied. There can be latency before regulators kick in.
There are a very few cases where software can harm hardware, however these usually need the software to go out of its way to damage the hardware or the hardware to have some quite provocative switches available to control it.
The examples that come to mind for me are Stuxnet, though that worked on PLCs operating industrial processes so quite different from a cable modem router, and software that could kill Android devices by messing around with voltage regulation.
I wouldn't have thought the router firmware would have any control at all over low level functions capable of harming hardware, that'd be looked after by whatever is in the motherboard, individual cards, and SoC's ROM/PLA?
If the required buttons and switches are exposed to the router firmware that would be an 'interesting' decision.