The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by greesil » Tue, Apr 02, 2024, 5:07 AM UTC

neilv wrote: post #166

freedomben wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, this is one of my favorite lines of all time: > "Anyway, I asked one of the geostatisticians to look into it--" > "Geostatisticians..." > "--yes, and she's produced a map showing the radius within which we can send email to be slightly more than 500 miles. There are a number of destinations within that radius that we can't reach, either, or reach sporadically, but we can never email farther than this radius."…

My favorite story kinda of this nature, of an expert as alien intelligence, was Feynmann's calculations about computer architecture of the Connection Machine: https://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machin... It's a few paragraphs, maybe too much to quote, but the bulk of it starts with: > By the end of that summer of 1983, Richard had completed his analysis of the behavior of the router, and much to ou…

That was a great read. It was also interesting to read about what happened to the company.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Machines_Corporatio...

One thought I had while reading this was what areas of technologies are still open to amateurs.

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

#242

Post by wodenokoto » Tue, Apr 02, 2024, 5:29 AM UTC

thekevan wrote: post #176

This 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?

The retelling let's us know very early that there is a line of sight component, but when you are sitting there in the middle of a world of no internet, you might just think of it as a "link" to the office.

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

#243

Post by pmontra » Tue, Apr 02, 2024, 5:37 AM UTC

obi1kenobi wrote: post #200

Uehreka wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It sounds fake I don’t think so. I definitely know tech people who get a particular idea in their head and will debug it to hell and back before taking a step back and realizing the obvious thing they missed. I’ve definitely done it before myself. > Also why not lay a cable. It sounds like they were trying to run a network between two properties that weren’t adjacent. They may not have had permission from the neigh…

(Author here) Across several city blocks, in fact, and longer than the max range of Ethernet on normal (Cat 5/5e/6) cables. Past ~300ft/100m, you need a repeater even for Ethernet. We would have needed at least one repeater somewhere along the line, which adds even more cost and complexity on top of needing to get permits from the city and approvals from all the neighbors in between. Anyone that says "just go get a p…

What happens when the tree grows taller? Would the new wifi still go through leaves and branches?

Edit: it probably did as the story is 10 years old.

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

#244

Post by 2-3-7-43-1807 » Tue, Apr 02, 2024, 5:38 AM UTC

jordigh wrote: 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.

i love those stories plus their detailed explanations because you can learn so much from them about technology, physics and even psychology.

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

#245

Post by chime » Tue, Apr 02, 2024, 5:39 AM UTC

ummonk wrote: post #238

chime wrote: post #233

I had a similar experience about shipping pallet being fully loaded fixing server connectivity issues almost two decades ago: https://chir.ag/tech/?49

That must have driven you crazy. The loop bit makes it so counterintuitive since interference from the pallet was actually helpful.

Exactly. It was also my first real job as an IT manager, and I had just setup my first business wifi network for use with a shiny new Windows mobile scanner. So it definitely made me question if I was cut out for it.

I left the company last year, having grown to 700+ employees in pharmaceutical manufacturing, a far-cry from my one-man IT department for 20 employees making shampoo. And while there were many, many weird issues over the years, none was ever so satisfying to resolve.

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

#246

Post by xxs » Tue, Apr 02, 2024, 6:11 AM UTC

obi1kenobi wrote: post #200

Uehreka wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It sounds fake I don’t think so. I definitely know tech people who get a particular idea in their head and will debug it to hell and back before taking a step back and realizing the obvious thing they missed. I’ve definitely done it before myself. > Also why not lay a cable. It sounds like they were trying to run a network between two properties that weren’t adjacent. They may not have had permission from the neigh…

(Author here) Across several city blocks, in fact, and longer than the max range of Ethernet on normal (Cat 5/5e/6) cables. Past ~300ft/100m, you need a repeater even for Ethernet. We would have needed at least one repeater somewhere along the line, which adds even more cost and complexity on top of needing to get permits from the city and approvals from all the neighbors in between. Anyone that says "just go get a p…

As for cable, you'd use fiber optic. There is really no need to go with copper in such a case.

Other than that I'd agree about your solution being optimal back then, and now. Btw how did you check the power brick, peak to peak voltage measurements? Bad capacitors is likely the single most common failure.

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

#247

Post by hughesjj » Tue, Apr 02, 2024, 6:13 AM UTC

tombert wrote: post #22

jordigh wrote: 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.

The 500 mile email story is one of my favorite reminders that, fundamentally, we're still governed by the laws of physics. It's funny, but it's also a reminder that, while networks might be very fast, the latency is still going to be governed by the speed of light.

I actually like thinking about the exchange of physical information as a network propagation delay, and entanglement/coherence as a distributed consensus algorithm. They're kinda samey from a conceptual point of view (in my amateur opinion)

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

#248

Post by mgarciaisaia » Tue, Apr 02, 2024, 6:21 AM UTC

chinchilla2020 wrote: post #202

thekevan wrote: post #176

This 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?

Most likely a fake story. The internet is littered with blogs that make up stories like this to get engagement. After all, this one made it to the top of hackernews. Chances of getting proof that this happened are zero

Never let reality ruin a nice story

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

#249

Post by ozim » Tue, Apr 02, 2024, 6:25 AM UTC

drb999 wrote: post #55

Reminds me of an extremely similar case with a long distance microwave link at a mobile telecom provider in Australia that I worked for. They relied quite heavily on microwave link chains and this particular one was in northern Queensland where fixed lines were hard to find and no local engineers were locally present/aware of the changing environment. Every week day + Saturday, from 7-3 the link would keep cutting ou…

Love that story.

For me it reminds me most debugging I see at work. People coming up with theories and doing some magic incantations on the interface.

Instead of reading the log files or reading error description which makes usually error and fix obvious in 10 seconds.

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

#250

Post by miragecraft » Tue, Apr 02, 2024, 6:31 AM UTC

This is how you know the WiFi is Garbage - only happy when it rains.

At least you get a clue in this case (and the famous 500 miles email), I was having sporadic disconnections with cable internet for the last 2 month and my ISP can’t find anything wrong.

Had to switch back to DSL and pay more for slower speed.