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The Wi-Fi only works when it's raining

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

#301

Post by edpichler »

navigate8310 wrote: post #284
edpichler wrote: post #281

Once I had an Internet cable that stopped for a while whenever I turned on the microwave (understandable), and also stopped when started raining. The trickiest part was that it turned off just for a while and ONLY at the beginning of the rain. I called the telecom company many times. They charge per visit in case no problem is found. I always had to explain the situation and ask the technician not to charge me and co…

Don't leave it at the cliffhanger

It was due to a pipe connected to the rain gutter in the house. At the beginning of the rain, the amount of water streaming through was hitting perfectly a joint in the internet cable. So it was happening only when the rain started, and stopping when the little stream got stronger and consequently jumping it and not hitting the cable joint anymore. It was discovered by the technician. He found it somewhere in the 100m of the cable coming out from the street pole, not an easy task.

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

#302

Post by pettycashstash2 »

Once upon a time, I owned a 1998 Volkswagen Wolfsburg Edition, a sleek and vibrant red car that turned heads wherever I went. As a city worker, I found it convenient to park my car at the train station and commute to work.

One particularly exhausting day, I trudged back from the train to the parking lot, eager to get home and unwind. As I approached my car, I noticed something peculiar—all the windows were missing. Panic gripped me, and I initially thought someone had vandalized my beloved vehicle. However, as I walked around the car, I couldn't find a single shard of glass on the ground. Upon closer inspection, I realized that the windows had simply been rolled down. Relief washed over me as I rolled them back up and drove home, putting the strange experience out of my mind.

Weeks passed, and the incident faded from my memory. Then, on a lazy Saturday morning, I sat on my back porch, sipping a hot cup of coffee and enjoying the tranquility of the day. Suddenly, the sky darkened, and a light rain began to fall. As the raindrops pattered against the roof, I heard an unexpected sound—the distinct whirring of car windows rolling down.

Perplexed, I set my coffee aside and hurried to the front of the house. To my astonishment, I found my Volkswagen's windows had mysteriously lowered themselves, allowing the rain to pour into the car's interior. It dawned on me that the windows' odd behavior must have been caused by a short circuit in the electrical system.

From that day on, I knew my 1998 Volkswagen Wolfsburg Edition was more than just a cool, bright red car—it had a quirky personality of its own, keeping me on my toes with its unexpected window antics.

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

#303

Post by hellweaver666 »

This reminds me of when I used to work for an ISP. Every November the "my internet doesn't work when we turn on the Christmas tree" calls would start. It was usually interference from cheap tree lights, but occasionally it was people unplugging the router to plug in their Christmas tree :D

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

#304

Post by rsynnott »

none_to_remain wrote: post #216
dmurray wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work in high-frequency trading. I had several tabs permanently open to the live weather radar feed for regions where we had microwave towers: the NE USA, the South of England, the Alps...

I used to be in an adjacent field and we used to joke about when the HFT guys were gonna get working on some neutrino detectors & sources to signal straight through the Earth. You could use them for science on the weekends!

Honestly I'm half-surprised no-one has tried this yet.

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

#305

Post by 1024core »

helph67 wrote: post #136
1024core wrote: post #117

Reminds me of that old tale about a lady whose phone would not ring, and her dog would bark before the phone rang.

Just the basic facts... Climbing a nearby telephone pole and hooking in his test set, he dialed the subscriber's house. The phone didn't ring. He tried again. The dog barked loudly, followed by a ringing telephone. Climbing down from the pole then he found: a. Dog was tied to the telephone system's ground post via an iron chain and collar. b. Dog was receiving 90 volts of signalling current. c. After several jolts, t…

Thank you! I had forgotten the details.

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

#306

Post by dkarl »

Weighing down the leaves is one possibility, but is it also possible that water adhering to surfaces was creating reflections and providing alternative paths for the signal? I don't know if such a thing could happen at that frequency, but if you imagine looking out a window at night towards a window in a distant building, with a tree blocking the direct line of sight, and someone in the window sending you a message with a flashlight, you would only see the light via reflections. On a dry night the reflections might be matte and hard to see, but on a rain-soaked night you might be able to see stronger and sharper reflections on metal poles, walls, or puddles that were visible from both windows.

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

#307

Post by cdme »

devilbunny wrote: post #221
cdme wrote: post #31

I once had a Time Warner tech blame the moisture content of the air for impacting the copper cabling to explain outages at our apartment. This both makes more sense and, I suppose, is more interesting.

My parents’ house was connected to old copper phone lines from ca. 1940, and by the 1980s rain intrusion from long or heavy storms would cause massive static on the line (made worse when squirrels ran on the line). This was disastrous when I got my first modem ca 1986. Just unusable until it dried out.

Interesting! This was a relatively new apartment building in Hollywood with similarly aged cable — maybe he was right and I'm altogether wrong. They ran the cable up through vertically adjacent units as well which left you at some degree of mercy of your downstairs neighbors.

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

#308

Post by denysvitali »

hbn wrote: 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…

Yes, it was IMHO too buried in the article.

At first (without the full context) I thought it was because rain blocked the external signal interference that was making the AP channel look busy.

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

#309

Post by vikingerik »

lupusreal wrote: post #290
vikingerik wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My recent version: I was playing a pinball game in an arcade. One particular ramp shot was registering earlier in the day and then stopped working. Eventually I realized that the sensor is an optical beam, and the receiver happened to be in direct sunlight coming in through a window! So it was continuously receiving infrared and would never report the beam being blocked by a pinball. Sure enough, it started working a…

You missed an opportunity to cheat the machine by waving your hand between it and the sun. ;)

Heh, but not exactly. If I blocked the sun, the receiver still would have been picking up the real beam. I would have had to block the sun _and_ make the shot with a pinball at the same instant... which is just playing the game normally with extra steps.

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

#310

Post by ajmurmann »

jcranmer wrote: post #234
rvba wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Of the European countries currently looking to join, Bosnia & Herzegovina will probably be the last one to actually make it. Which is pretty surprising considering that Kosovo has a is-this-actually-a-country dispute within the EU (which also blocks Serbia's accession), and Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine have not-so-minor problems of not being able to control portions of their territory thanks to Russian occupation. T…

Bosnia Herzegovina is so tiny and has all the trouble that comes with the Republica Serbska and all the historical baggage of the region. From a poorly practical POV it honestly doesn't seem worth the trouble at all, especially given how EU decision making works
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