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Admin
All you need to do now is build a Faraday cage into the walls of the microwave room, and you're set!
Admin
The first location wasn't that bad. At least the router blends well with the environment, so drunken frat boys can't use it for target practice.
Admin
When I saw the picture, I thought the story was going to be about some "inventor" who figured out how to harness the microwave's 2.4 GHz radiation to amplify the WLAN signal, to tragic (and yet comical) effect.
Admin
Hey, if he doesn't like WTFU, he should transfer to South Texas Finance University and quit whining.
Admin
Is that near the Sam Houston Institute of Technology?
Admin
There's a simple soluton to this - Most building codes require a dedicated circuit for high-draw appliances (and yes, a microwave qualifies). Just call the city and report it.
Oh wait, that would only solve the microwave problem...
Admin
Perhaps the most used place for wireless is in the dorm's kitchen, and unless they had the Wlan in there, no one would be able to get a signal in the kitchen since its in the basement and in a room full of microwaves. At least thats what I want to believe...
Admin
I could also add the integrated DHCP and network login system (at another university of course) that does not reset it self unless you log off manually.
Admin
And I can just imagine the clueless WTFU IT people wondering why not. "It's on the other side of the wall! That should stop the signal interference, right? It's not like the whole point of these signals is that they go through walls..."
Admin
Don't forget the Free University of Comstock-Kalamazoo, MI
Admin
Genious =D
Admin
A Faraday cage shields the inside of the cage from outside fields, not vice versa.
Admin
Wait... I thought "wireless" meant that it didn't matter where you put it...
You mean there's interference issues? And problems with going through walls/floors? Next you'll be telling me there's a limit to the number of simultaneous connections, and that I need more than one unit to service a few hundred students.
Admin
This reminds me of when I used to be a 'support engineer' for a dental practice management software company. I was sent onsite to diagnose why a particular dentist's laptop in his office could never make a reliable wireless connection to the server at the front counter.
The 2 x-ray machine rooms were directly in between the two, followed by a number of dental chair rooms with who knows how much electrical equipment running, finally the dentist's office at the back of the building. Gee...
Admin
WTF: "* For the obvious impaired: name changed to protected the guilty"
Admin
Six microwaves?
Admin
You had me at "solar azimuth".
Well done.
Admin
My first thought was, its in the basement, and in the kitchen, that's two separate WTFs.
Admin
Isn't is obvious?
The system admins didn't want to deal with rogue access points and people breaking <font style="background-color: #ffff00">WEP</font> so they did the most logical thing: Put the router is the least accessible place.
It's good to see there are still some good <font style="background-color: #ffff00">BOFH</font> around.
captcha=shizzle
Admin
But that wouldn't prevent the microwaves from emitting 2.4GHz radio waves, would it?
Admin
If that were true, you'd get boiled looking at your food in the microwave oven. A Faraday cage works two ways: it both prevents external EM waves from entering the cage and internal EM waves from leaving the cage (when the electromagnetic waves have a larger wavelength than the mesh size).
Admin
I am thinking that they would simply remove 5 microwave ovens when challenged.
Which would make the WIFI situation better!!
Admin
(Sorry, I'm bored with my personal WTF)
Admin
No, no, you're not thinking WTFily enough. We need to put the Faraday cage around the room with the WAP in it, so the interference from the microwaves can't get to the precious access point.
Admin
What's wrong with it being in the basement? In my last house, I had my wireless router in the basement. Thanks to the concrete block basement walls, it was damn near impossible to get a signal outside anywhere other than standing right in front of a basement window, but I had a perfect signal everywhere in the house.
Admin
Frat boys don't live in dorms...they live in FRATS.*
*Unless they go to Duke, where there is no such thing as a frat house. Hahah duke sucks
Admin
That's actually not a bad idea from a wireless security standpoint -- arranging your router so that people have to be physically in your house to get a signal. Better than solely WEP, in any case. I should try that.
Admin
Oh great, just what I need, somebody breaking and entering into my house just so they can steal my wireless internet.
Admin
[image]
http://www.acceptedmovie.com/
http://www.acceptedmovie.com/
What? Am I the only one who's seen this movie?
Sam Houston Institute of Technology must be a daughter / sibling school...
Admin
In Baltimore there is school called the College Of Notre Dame Of Maryland. Its a Catholic school....
Admin
The real WTF is that the microwaves aren't connected to the wireless router so you can turn on the microwave by using your laptop.
captcha: random. which is where the IT staff put this router at.
Admin
It's actually South Harmon Institute of Technology.
Yes, I recently saw "Accepted". Funny stuff...
Proud to be a SHIT-head. :)
Admin
???? WTF ?????
Admin
Easy, just build a Faraday cage that keeps the microwaves outside, and the rest of the world inside... oh wait...
Admin
So the rappers would have been alright ?
(or should I say aight?)
Admin
Sounds like we need a Yadaraf cage.
Admin
Yes. There are dorms that can hold hundreds of students. It doesn't seem unreasonable. My freshman dorm was 3 floors, with one on each floor, and there weren't that many students AND the damn things were always "busy"
But I call foul, those microwaves are WAYYYYY too clean. No way that is a college dorm.
Admin
Wonderful!
They'll be pleased that the Vatican is reviewing its stance on contraceptives (see this article for a good Beavis & Butthead-style chuckle).
Admin
I used to go to a school whose "new" campus had been built during the height of the cold war, and whose buildings were radiation shielded to a degree that is hard to explain to people. You put your radio in the window, and you could get signal from whatever direction your window faced, but that was it, and if it wasn't in the window, you got no signal at all.
Ditto cell phones, ditto pagers, ditto wireless internet.
Microwave ovens would have been redundant.
Admin
That is soooooo typical. I recall getting a call about a computer I requested to have a department use to do some work. It had a application tied to the inventory system that allowed shipping documents to be printed. "It's not working. fix it." so we go down to the department and sure enough it's so bad even the computer won't turn on. ok. I have no clue, lets get our insurance department, calls are made, another machine was provided. I recall getting another call about the computer I requested soon after..."It's not working. fix it." so we go back down there and sure enough same problem. that's when we realized the idiot who set up the system used the only available flat surface in the room - on top of the plants diesel electric generator that had no signs on it saying "warning" or "danger - electrical generator."
Admin
The scary part of this, is I ran into an issue at a former employer. Whenever anyone would use the microwave, wireless would die. The WAP wasn't in the break room with the microwave, but it was close enough.
The solution didn't envolve moving the WAP to a better location farther away from the break room, but to paint the entire breakroom with some special paint w/additive that would make the room a faraday's cage.
Good thing I got out of there before being tasked with painting the break room.
Admin
The obvious solution here is to be more enterprisey and combine the 6 microwaves into one "microwave service bus"
Admin
Actually, Faraday cages primarily block electric fields, not electromagnetic waves. They will also reflect (and to a lesser degree absorb) EM radiation, irrespective of direction, if they have fine enough meshes and the cage's material has a low enough electrical resistance. However this is a local effect that has little to do with the total geometry of the cage.
The mesh cage in a microwave oven has two purposes: First to reduce the amount of radiation emitted to the outside, second to reflect the wave inside the device to create a standing wave. Ideally, no radiation would leak, none would be absorbed in the mesh and all would be reflected. You could get close to that ideal by using a superconducting mesh material but of course these are still unaffordable, not to mention the difficulty of cooling the mesh to work temperatures which means you will always leak radiation. When I get my arm close to the microwave oven at my workplace while it is running, I can clearly feel hairs standing on end because of electricity. And the WLAN interference mentioned in the article was obviously caused by radiation leakage too.
The purpose of a Faraday cage, however, is to shield the inside from electric fields, i.e. static electricity. It can have a much higher electrical resistance but geometry becomes vitally important. It has to be an actual cage so that charges can travel round the entire enclosing area.
Long story short: A Faraday cage can also often be used to reflect radiation, but that's not what makes it a Faraday cage.
Admin
Reminds me of how our old Appletalk network would go down in our building at random times for random durations.
The usual tweaks didnt seem to improve anything. Finally I put a scope on the wire and a few hours later the usual AppleTalk signals got swamped out by about 30 volts of some high-frequency signal, which went away 20 minutes later. There was nothing on or near our network wires that could do that. Measuring the signal indicated it was around 13MHz. Hmmmm.. 13.56MHz is a frequency for kilowatt to megawatt industrial RF heaters... But we we not in an industrial neighborhood. Then some little light wqent on in my brain-- on the floor above us was an office with the sign "PLASMA RESEARCH LAB".
I went and knockd on their door, and in an unusual bit of social engineering foresight, asked them if their network ever had problems. They were very glad to discuss their serious network problems! They showed me around thier lab, the centerpiece of which was this big quartz tube into which they shot various gases and zapped them with several kilowatts of RF to make the gases glow. All the equipment was out in the open. No safety glass. No RF shields.
I counseled them about the hazards of putting their eyeballs just a few inches from kilowatts of RF, without shielding. They seemed to comprehend very little, so I just went and suggested to the boss that we speed up our transition to coax-cable ethernet.
Admin
When the Polytechnics in England became universities, Newcastle Poly changed it's name to City University of Newcastle upon Tyne. They followed the entire process through and went as far as getting new letterheads before someone figured it out.
Admin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage
If a microwave's shielding is a Faraday cage that keeps the radiation in (mostly), why wouldn't a larger, additional Faraday cage provide further shielding? I'm pretty sure that a Faraday cage works both ways.
Admin
But what directory should the bus be in?
Admin
No, seven. There is one stuck to the ceiling.
Admin
Yeah, because when the microwave hits the shield, it quickly checks which side it hit so it knows if it should cease to be or not.
Admin
heh, good movie :p
captcha: initech..