Is this a common occurrence for people? I literally have 0 routers/modems break on me. I upgrade them before they break, and I'm not replacing them a few years either. The router before my current router was a 802.11g router.
Besides it turns out there is a telnet script that tunes the automatic update to once every few minutes instead of every few milliseconds in an no sleep endless loop, which frees up a ton of CPU and lets the thing cool down. Telecom provider knew but didnt't want to change their config.
In my case, I just switched ISPs.
Is it common? Maybe not, and you're right there, especially not compared to some of the other stuff we sell (hard drives, oh boy). But it's definitely not unheard of.