Long story short--a UPS transitioning from line to battery makes most surge strips think it's a surge. They then cause (quite intentionally) a short. Bad for the UPS electronics. Do it often enough, and it's quite likely to cause a large enough short to blow both the surge strip and the UPS electronics.

A line-interactive and/or double-conversion UPS will take care of the spikes/surges. Only power bars (without surge protection) should be plugged into their load side.

Now, if you have a good UPS that puts out a true sine-wave (not an approximation, not pretty good, but an actual sine wave output), some of this does not apply. Unless you put the UPS on a bench and test it, make no assumptions that it's an actual sine-wave output.

Basically, square-wave output and stepped-wave output waveforms can make a surge strip think it's a surge/spike, and they short. That's bad for the UPS. Wikipedia sort of gets this right, but they don't really explain why (non sine-wave output waveforms are what cause the surge strip to go nuts and short).

Learned the need for a UPS the hard way. I have a buffalo router which has been reliable so far.

I've had one that one day decided it's job was to pop the mains breaker.

this is the same reason you can not link up UPS units 'in line' to have hours of battery on a desktop pc, router, etc.

Thanks for the explanation CBF. I was aware that certain appliances/components don't like pseudo-sinewaves, didn't realise it was that way for surge supporessors too.

DD-WRT:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv3/index.php

Tomato:
http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato

Please try the firmware upgrade and the Linksys/Buffalo routers listed above. I had reliability issues with my Netgear, but with my $60 Linksys w/DD-WRT the thing runs rocks solid. Just set up another old Linksys as a Wireless Repeater to increase the signal in my house. Couldn't be happier.

Thanks!

I have always had very good luck with netgear routes. Indeed, one needs to often make sure the firmware is up to date, but over the past oh 6+ years, I have had very good success with probably about 20+ routers, switches and access points. I really like their software, historically offering many features like address reservation that are very easy to impliment and use, and access. I have also had good luck with linksys (although there was a period there where I think their quality went down) and their open access wooed me over a few years ago to a router that would run DD-WRT and tomato (which I use now for their great implimentation of QOS on the router)

recently though, netgear announced that they TOO were going to offer AP's and routers that would use the open source communities firmwares :

http://www.myopenrouter.com/

And their pricing is very attractive. I might pick one up to try it, and compare it to the other linksys and buffalos that I have running tomato.

I honestly, would not encourage anyone away from netgear, and actually for the more common consumer user I think they represent a better fit with their UI and features implimentation. Linksys has come a long way in the past few years in that regard as well.

In my personal experience (3 routers - and never again) Netgear makes cheap garbage that overheats far too easily. Not surprisingly they have short warranties. And poor support to boot. Just avoid them.

There's no way you should be going through routers that fast. Either change your manufacturer or put a UPS inbetween the router and the wall to filter the power.

I hear bad things about Netgear, but then again I just replaced my Netgear which worked fine for over 5 years. I replaced it with another Netgear, this one with Wireless N and gigabit.

One hears many bad things and some good things about every consumer level wi-fi router.