Last year I had every RB532 that I own fail on me with a week.
This caused a little bit of chaos, but they were all replaced with RB433AHs so it was a win win situation.
Last week, my RB600s started randomly rebooting.
I have a number of RB600s and I really don’t want to go through the whole rigmarole of replacing them. Some are in pretty remote spots that require six hours in low range in a 4x4 just to get to the site.
Does anyone have any ideas as to why this would just suddenly start happening, at the same time, at a number of sites?
to clarify some more - capacitor life is shortened when the temperature is very high. so time given by frankie is not always true. OP - please visually inspect the board. is any part damaged, or looks suspicious?
Very high ambient temperature damages not only capacitors. To be more precise capacitor’s life shortened by many parameters: http://www.illinoiscapacitor.com/tech-center/life-calculators.aspx.
For example todays solid state capacitors expected life is 5000Hrs at 105 Celsius, which is approx. 208 days. On Routerboards soldered caps are 105 Celsius Suscon 560uF 6.3V. Yes, they are not solid, so lifetime much be smaller (maybe twice or more), but at 55-60 degree celsius (i never seen more on RB450G for example) they must work at least 5 years. But this is not true. Todays switching power supplies works at higher freqency (45khz or more) and needs low impedance capacitors with high ripple current. General purpose capacitors with high ESR will self-heat and not regulate the current properly.