system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why do I occasionally need to unplug/reset my wireless router?
gpt
The way devices like routers are constructed relies on a design called a state machine. All a state machine does is switch between states. Each state performs an action (like sending your request for a website), decides what state it should go to next, and then goes to that next state which follows the same procedure.

This sort of system is easy to design, easy to modify, and easy to scale. The problem is that things do go wrong for many different reasons, and it is possible for the router to enter a state where it should not have gone. Once its in this state, it doesn't have any actions to perform, or logic for deciding where to go next. So it just gets stuck there, doing nothing, unable to reset itself.

By unplugging/resetting the router, you are forcing it back into a state where it knows what to do, thus resolving the problem.

A good design has error correction built in. In these designs, when the router enters a "bad state" it is instructed to reset itself, and for the most part you would never even know it occurred. That being said, these designs cost more money to build and test. Since manually resetting a router isn't as big a deal on a home network as it is on a corporate network, they can make the home routers cheaper (in both senses of the word). It's a trade off.

I used to have a cheap NETGEAR router which need to be reset twice a day, but since purchased a linksys router which sans initial setup has never failed me in this regard.

**tl;dr**  A cheap router can go into a "bad state" where it doesn't know what to do or how to fix itself and gets stuck.