Why does this sound like it was written by AI?
The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining
181–190 of 331 posts
Re: The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining
#182Some years ago I put in a point to point wifi link for a family member, from house to garage "block". I specified a pair of Ubiquity Nanostations which are tiny, PoE powered and have a decent range. The house end is inside a UK standard tiled roof - dense 3/4", allow for slat, so 1"+ thick and dense material. The other end is 20m away (LoS) and external mounting was forbidden. The garage block has foil lined Kingspan…
Why was subterfuge required? Something is missing from this story.
[deleted]
Re: The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining
#183This reminds me of a taxi driver in Dubrovnik, Croatia who told me that his cel service would not work when it rained because the rain changed transmissions where he lived in a way that meant that his phone would connect to a cel tower one valley over which was in Bosnia where he didn't have a data plan.
Not for long! Once the republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina becomes a member state of the European Union (a process which is seemingly progressing smoothly), it will be part of the European mobile phone 'roaming area' that is regulated as per PE/51/2018/REV/1. End result: your taxi driver's data plan will work whatever the weather :)
Will EU ever allow them in?
With the problem of Hungary vetoing a lot (to help Russia) letting B&H in does not look smart.
B&H comes with its own bag of problems too.
Re: The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining
#184This is a bit ridiculous. How can you know that you have a ling of sight element to you network and not check that as the very first thing when you hear about rain effecting the wifi?
It sounds fake, especially as the solution would be to get the original equipment higher, instead of buying new equipment?
Also why not lay a cable.
Re: The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining
#185Let 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.
There was a site with stories like these somewhere, I sadly can't remember the URL any more.
I think the one that stuck out to me was the Soviet mainframe computer that would get weird bit flips almost every day, always at the exact same time. Somebody compared what was different about the days it didn't get bit flips on, it turns out those were the days on which a particular train didn't run, the computer was very close to a railway station. What train was it, you ask? The one transporting the (definitely perfectly safe to eat, definitely not filled to the brim with nuclear radiation) cow meat from Chernobyl. The radiation was intense enough to cause bit flips, I'm sure the quality of soviet components didn't help here either.
Re: The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining
#186Another classic: Can log in while sitting down, can't log in when standing up. I need to find the reference ... Edit: OK, here's one version: https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/3v52p...
I recall reading a variant of that where a terminal had a "print screen" button, and the claim was it would work when standing but not when sitting down (or was it vice versa).
In the end there were two print screen buttons, only one of them functional, and one of them more obvious when standing (or sitting).
These kind of stories are classic debugging parables that teach you to step back and consider what you may be assuming incorrectly when something absolutely doesn't make sense or seems impossible.
Re: The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining
#187One of the sysadmins at a friendly company had the same problem... only that it was a >2km link in a densely built-up city and it turned out to be a crane that moved in on rails each morning with the beginning of a shift and then moved out in the evening!
Took a guy standing there with binoculars to realize what was going on...
Re: The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining
#188The 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…
I thought the same, although I probably would not have immediately gone to the Wifi transmitter.
After a couple decades of debugging various internet issues the first thing I now do is check the 'source' works (i.e. plug a laptop into the modem directly, but with a different cable). If that works I go down 'the line' until something does not work. That usually finds the culprit quite quickly (and also stops me from messing with my router config when it's an ISP issue).
In OPs scenario, the moment you realise that the office internet is working fine and it's only the home internet that is having issues, the connection between the two would have been the obvious place to look next.
That being said, it's still a fun story, and still quite 'unexpected' that rain could be the determinating factor on whether you'll have working internet or not.
Re: The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining
#189Let 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?
There's the car/ice-cream/vapor-lock story. Oops, I ruined it.
Re: The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are describing a situation in which a line-of-sight channel is replaced with a rich/complex channel: the exact conditions under which MIMO distinguishes itself from beamforming. I'd say incomplete rather than incorrect, and the complete story is worth knowing as it makes the solution used more interesting.
(Author here.) Yeah, I get where you're coming from. Ultimately, this was an editing decision first and foremost. Beamforming is cool and magical, and MIMO even more so. The post wasn't intended as a primer on wireless technology, just as a fun read for folks to enjoy. I tried to sprinkle in some nerd-snipe-quality technical detail and offer links for folks who might want to dig in, and MIMO is explicitly discussed i…
I get where you're coming from too.
I felt the need to mention the difference as so many people equate beamforming with MIMO and claim that there is no difference, when in fact that difference, which Foschini discovered in 1996, is responsible for spatial multiplexing and the high WiFi data rates we enjoy. I figured the typical HN reader might be more technical and interested in the difference, or maybe not.