The WiFi only works when it's raining
8 days ago
- #Debugging
- #Wi-Fi
- #Engineering
- The author's father, an experienced engineer, claimed their home Wi-Fi only worked when it was raining, which seemed absurd.
- Upon investigation, the author discovered that the Wi-Fi bridge between their home and the father's office was being obstructed by a neighbor's tree.
- Rainwater weighed down the tree's branches, temporarily clearing the line-of-sight for the Wi-Fi signal, explaining the correlation with rain.
- The solution was to upgrade the Wi-Fi hardware to 802.11n devices, which used beamforming to improve signal resistance to interference.
- The story highlights the unexpected ways environmental factors can affect technology and the importance of thorough debugging.