"Close the window you're letting all the WiFi out"
The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining
11–20 of 331 posts
Re: The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining
#12I had one recently - old Nintendo switch; worked fine when docked, couldn't get an internet connection on wifi.
Turns out it had been so long that the wifi MAC was picking up a DHCP address that was blocked at the firewall; the dock had its own MAC so it got a good address.
Re: The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining
#13I had an experience like this once! My my laptop would inexplicably and intermittently stop connecting to the internet. It turned out my bluetooth headset was using the same band as the wifi but I only figured this out after a few months and a replaced wifi card. I wouldn't wish that experience on my worst enemy.
Turns out most consumer electronics operate in the same unlicensed consumer bands, so your bluetooth mouse, headset, wifi, and microwave all tussle for the same stuff.
I had a fun one where every time I would get out of my chair my monitors would turn off, turns out the EM fields from the compression/decompression can actually be enormous in some cases.
Re: The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining
#14The article briefly mentions that this was unbelievable because rain should make Wi-Fi worse not better.
That parallels my experience but I didn’t realize was commonly understood. I noticed that in the hot summer the Wi-Fi reception in my yard (IE, farther from the access point in the house) is worse. Eventually I decided that summer heat is really proxy for humidity and that it wasn’t unreasonable for high water concentration in the air to provide an obstacle to Wi-Fi signal.
Re: The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining
#15Let me see if I'm the first one to link to that classic story in the same series, "I cannot send email further than 500 miles"
http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html
Or the Magic/More Magic switch
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html
It's fun when physical reality meets the abstract models that we have built in our heads of these machines.
Re: The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining
#16I had an experience like this once! My my laptop would inexplicably and intermittently stop connecting to the internet. It turned out my bluetooth headset was using the same band as the wifi but I only figured this out after a few months and a replaced wifi card. I wouldn't wish that experience on my worst enemy.
I couldn't use my apartment complex's laundry machine if I was still connected to my own Wi-Fi (and using it).
It would interfere with the Bluetooth signal.
Re: The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining
#17TIL about Fresnel Zones! > Interestingly, objects outside the straight line between antennas can still cause interference! For best signal quality, the Fresnel zone between the antennas should be clear of obstructions. But perfection isn't achievable in practice, so RF equipment like Wi-Fi uses techniques like error-correcting codes so that it can still work without a perfectly clear Fresnel zone. I wonder if other w…
Yes they do. That’s what an echo is, sound waves bouncing off an obstacle between two points. That obstacle doesn’t need to be within the direct line of sight, just within the dispersion area of the outgoing sound wave.
At the far end you’ll hear (although in reality, your brain will almost certainly cover this up for you) distortion caused by the sound wave defracting off the obstacle and interfering with the primary wavefront. Hence the reason why people put so much effort into design concert halls, and adding sound dampening treatments to recording studios. Obstacles will distort sound, but energy absorbing obstacles will distort less.
Re: The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining
#18The title might've been a Fleetwood (the other kind of) Mac reference.
o/~ Wi-Fi's only working when it's rainin'
Players only stutter when they're buff'rin'
Websites, they will page load oh so slooooww
When the rain falls down, you can downloadRe: The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining
#19Actually experience the same thing but for different reasons.
I've lived in the same place for 25 years, so I've seen the invention of wifi and then checking every few months for other users on wifi analyzer, I've seen it grown and grown.
Well in that 25 years they've built so many surrounding apartment complexes that the 2.4ghz saturation is absolutely insane. I cannot believe how many networks show up on the analyzer in 2024, has to be well over 100.
But when it rains, it cuts off dozens of those other apartments, and I get better signal inside my own apartment.
Re: The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining
#20TIL about Fresnel Zones! > Interestingly, objects outside the straight line between antennas can still cause interference! For best signal quality, the Fresnel zone between the antennas should be clear of obstructions. But perfection isn't achievable in practice, so RF equipment like Wi-Fi uses techniques like error-correcting codes so that it can still work without a perfectly clear Fresnel zone. I wonder if other w…
> Side note, is this story old?
FTA:
> At the time, I was still a college student — this was over 10 years ago.