Live data from Hacker News

The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining

predr.ag

81–90 of 331 posts

Re: The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining

#81
The unusual internet setup is pretty important information to bury a few paragraphs in. Once that was explained it seemed like they should have started by checking nothing was blocking the antenna before tediously running around plugging the laptop into things and following cables and checking power supplies on the networking equipment?

Hindsight is 20/20 but I correctly guessed the ending as soon as that information was added.

Re: The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining

#83
post #8

I 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 have a fancy microwave that degrades my fancy bluetooth headset but not others. Did replacing the wifi card work? I'm wondering if I need to switch up my expensive microwave, or expensive headphone, because replacing bluetooth dongle (with another generic one with same chipset) hasn't resolved issue.

Re: The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining

#84
post #15

Let 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.

First thing I thought of too. Anyone know if there a list of more articles similar to these three?

A user was having a really bizarre problem: They could log in when they were sitting down in a seat in front of the keyboard, but when they were standing in front of the keyboard, their password didn't work! The problem happened every time, so they called for support, who finally figured it out after watching them demonstrate the problem many times:

It turned out that some joker had rearranged the numbers keys on the keyboard, so they were ordered "0123456789" instead of "1234567890". And the user's password had a digit in it. When the user was sitting down comfortably in front of the keyboard, they looked at the screen while they touch-typed their password, and were able to log in. But when they were standing in front of the computer, they looked at the keyboard and pressed the numbers they saw, which were wrong!

Re: The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining

#85
post #56

While we're on the subject: I still can't solve this and thought you'd either laugh or you are the only people who know what I'm going through :) I have some fancy Asus Mesh wifi routers at home. I sit next to the cable modem and one mesh endpoint. My wife sits upstairs. there's an upstairs mesh endpoint but I think neither of us are usually connected to it (mostly serves to extend our connection to go to yard). But…

EMI maybe? Certain chairs cause monitors to go blank for a few seconds.

https://mastodon.social/@haeckerfelix/110272427676278609

Re: The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining

#86
My garage door opener works much better when it’s raining and also at night. I’m out case, our solar inverter (or one or more of the optimizers at the panels) creates enough noise to interfere.

I also believe our microwave is adding noise to the same circuit our WiFi router is on. Despite using 5GHz, WiFi is severely degraded whenever the microwave is on.

Re: The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining

#87
post #15

Let 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.

First thing I thought of too. Anyone know if there a list of more articles similar to these three?

The Daily WTF is full of them.

https://thedailywtf.com

Re: The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining

#88
post #81

The unusual internet setup is pretty important information to bury a few paragraphs in. Once that was explained it seemed like they should have started by checking nothing was blocking the antenna before tediously running around plugging the laptop into things and following cables and checking power supplies on the networking equipment? Hindsight is 20/20 but I correctly guessed the ending as soon as that information…

[flagged]

Re: The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining

#89
I've had a similar weather experience where my internet connection dropped when it was cold. Turns out some water had seeped into the optical fiber connector, when it froze it broke the connection, and it would recover when it thawed. This one was a nightmare to troubleshoot.

Re: The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining

#90
I have a hard time believing this. Wifi can go through multiple walls. And if these were directional P2P links, they can easily go through and even around trees, I've deployed them in the past and they don't need perfect line of sight.

Granted the equipment could have been cheap, but this sounds questionable. He's asserting that the a few leaves at the top of a tree were blocking it when it wasn't raining? Idk.

Post reply on HN