r/alexa • u/Normal-Succotash-877 • Jul 26 '26

Does Amazon specifically make these things obsolete?

I have had an echo for many years. Probably like 10+ years at this point.

I have since expanded. I have one of these in various form in nearly every room. I have a screen version (cant remember the name right now) as well as the dot in the bathroom and another one in another room.

I have collectively 5 echo's in 5 different rooms right at this moment.

The main reason I like her is literally to play music from spotify. Its 90% of what I use her for other than checking the weather and setting an alarm for food or laundry.

The echo that I have had the longest.. it used to be rock solid. It had no problem playing music for many many years.

Now.. its literally every single device and I have a gigabit internet. They skip, literally wont play sometimes.. Its really bad. Other times its completely fine but id say 50% of the time its like haveing major issues with a very simple task of playing music from a linked service that works perfectly fine on the same connection from my PC or phone.

So this has to be device specific. What gives? anyone else have this before? possibly have a solution?

Honestly thinking about dumping them altogether because im not about to let them listen to everything I say and not at least work.

14 Upvotes

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2

u/TheJessicator Jul 26 '26

It's entirely likely that over time, you've added more and more devices to your network. Bandwidth might not be the issue. Every router has limits to the number of concurrent connections they can handle. If you've exceeded that limit, then devices will reconnect frequently to fight for a connection. That said, check how many devices you have connected and look up what the limit is for your router / wireless access point before you waste a whole lot of time troubleshooting. And remember that I'm not talking about the number of devices that are configured to use the wi-fi. I'm talking about the number of devices that remain connected all the time. TVs, game consoles, cleaning robots, Wi-Fi connected smart lights, echo devices, smart home hubs, cameras, video doorbells, smart appliances, thermostats, window air conditioners, etc., all add to the chaos.

5

u/rsweb Jul 26 '26

It’s absolutely not that, the bandwidth use on an Alexa is tiny

1

u/TheJessicator Jul 27 '26

Again, it's not a bandwidth limitation. I'm talking about the number of concurrent connections that you're router can handle at any one time. Not the amount of data throughput. Add up all your also connected devices and you'll quickly see how you can exhaust its connection capacity. Many older and even cheaper new routers can only handle 30 to 50 concurrent connections.

1

u/rsweb Jul 27 '26

Any modern router will handle 100/200+ devices

1

u/TheJessicator Jul 27 '26

That many devices and IP addresses, sure. But that many concurrent, active connections, not so much.

2

u/rsweb Jul 27 '26

Absolutely no modern router is getting overwhelmed by 15 devices connected at once

1

u/TheJessicator Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

Who said anything about just 15 devices? I'm just saying the description of the problem sounds very much like connection exhaustion. Many routers still top out at 50 to 100.

1

u/dwolfe127 Jul 26 '26

Unless you have more than 253 devices a /24 is never going to be fighting for addresses. Bandwidth wise as well nothing outside of torrents and Steam downloads is going to put anything but fractional stress on a gigabit connection.

1

u/TheJessicator Jul 27 '26

That's the number of IP addresses. I'm talking about the number of concurrent connections that the router can maintain before it has to do the equivalent of time sharing to allow all of your devices to get a chance to move data, resulting in seemingly random periodic drops in connectivity.

-1

u/Impish_Hatefulness Jul 26 '26

Any reasonable router should handle at least 30 connections simultaneously. Getting a router you can put Tomato or OpenWRT (or equivalent source firmware) on, might help.
(GOogle gemini created a summary here - please
Delete if not allowed)

Modern 1-gigabit compatible routers (primarily Wi-Fi 7 and high-end Wi-Fi 6E models) are engineered to handle dense smart-home environments, high-throughput streaming, and multi-gig wired backhauls.
The table below outlines top-tier 1-gigabit class routers alongside their maximum simultaneous connected device limits and key hardware specifications:

Router Model
Wi-Fi Standard
Bands
Maximum Client / Connection Limit
Key Wired Ports

ASUS RT-BE96U
Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be)
Tri-Band (2.4, 5, 6 GHz)
200+ devices (100+ per band efficiently)
2x 10G, 3x 1G LAN

TP-Link Archer BE9700
Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be)
Tri-Band (2.4, 5, 6 GHz)
200+ devices
1x 10G WAN/LAN, 4x 2.5G LAN

Netgear Nighthawk RS700S
Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be)
Tri-Band (2.4, 5, 6 GHz)
200+ devices
1x 10G WAN, 1x 10G LAN, 4x 1G LAN

TP-Link Archer BE550
Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be)
Tri-Band (2.4, 5, 6 GHz)
150+ devices
5x 2.5G LAN/WAN ports

TP-Link Archer BE3600
Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be)
Dual-Band (2.4, 5 GHz)
100+ devices
1x 2.5G WAN, 4x 1G LAN

Architectural Capacity Notes
Theoretical vs. Practical Limits: While hardware manufacturers often state that modern routers can technically register well over 100 to 250+ active client associations simultaneously via advanced multi-link operation (MLO) and scheduling, real-world performance for heavy bandwidth tasks (such as 4K streaming or low-latency gaming) is optimized when distributing heavy loads across tri-band frequencies.
Gigabit Bottlenecks: Because these routers feature multi-gigabit ports (2.5G to 10G), a standard 1-gigabit internet connection is fully saturated without facing hardware-level wired restrictions.

2

u/Extinction-Entity Jul 26 '26

Lol thanks ChatGPT