• Dave Platt (unregistered) in reply to James

    The case and door of a microwave oven is far from being a perfect Faraday cage - neither the grid over the glass, nor the seal around the edge of the door is a complete barrier to microwaves. Here in the U.S., a microwave oven isn't in violation of Federal microwave-energy-leakage rules unless it's leaking more than 5 milliwatts per square centimeter at a distance of about 2 inches from the oven surface.  Even if the leakage is only a small fraction of this level, a microwave oven can easily leak a good fraction of a watt of RF from its entire surface, and it's probably not uncommon for higher-powered microwaves to leak a watt or more.

     
    It's not going to be easy for a wireless access point or router to be able to pick up the signal from a laptop, when the laptop's WiFi card is only putting out around 15 dBm (roughly 50 milliwatts) and a microwave oven ten feet away is leaking 10x or 20x as much total energy on the same band.  To the WAP receiver, the interference could easily be 100x the strength of the desired signal.  The spread-spectrum nature of 802.11b helps matters somewhat, but it's not a real cure.
     

  • jesus (unregistered) in reply to Dave Platt

    This is ridiculous. How come no one has suggested that they simply move the router? Forget Faraday cages and all that nonsense...

  • (cs) in reply to jesus

    Anonymous:
    This is ridiculous. How come no one has suggested that they simply *move the router*? Forget Faraday cages and all that nonsense...

    Because that would not be enterprisey enough... 

  • justus (unregistered) in reply to madjo

    We, somewhere in Germany, have "Wireless-Cables". These were installed after the admin did not like the idea of enabling every single mac adress in his database. the way to go was: connect a switch and some cables to one of the sockets where they usually fit access points. instead of needing to enable every computer you need to use an unreliable vpn connection.

  • Chalain (unregistered)

    You know, this actually might not be so bad, once good old college ingenuity kicks in.

     "I gotta download a big file. Hang on, I'm gonna go microwave six burritos at once."
     

  • (cs)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    The good news is that, now, they have a good hour or two of wireless connectivity before maintenance comes to open the breaker.



    At the hostel I inhabited in 1st year, people's desire to run portable heaters and hair driers simultaneously guaranteed a circuit breaker would trip a few times each day during winter.  Some clever person told people "just turn all the breakers off then back on".  So that's what they'd do.  Then they'd go turn all their appliances back on and wonder why it tripped again..

    This was back when even Toshiba "clamshell" computers ran on mains power, and students certainly couldn't afford them, so having a computer meant getting switched off regularly in winter.
  • Nihil (unregistered) in reply to Kibi

    Letterheads, minivans, websites. Here in somerset, we don't care. Bring it on!

    I won't give you the URL for the web site, I'll let you google for "somerset scat" instead.

  • Bruce (unregistered)

    Oh, soooo, familiar.  When my company first started using wireless in worked great in this one location.  The after about four months it would drop signal once or twice a day.  Thinking about it with my network/telecom engineer I realized something: he recently installed a cordless phone.  "Mike, was that phone a 2.4 GHz phone?"  "Yep".  Talked to the supervisor--hey, the computers stopped working whenever the phone rang, hmmmmmm.  He swapped out the phone with a 900MHz phone and all was fine.

    Observation -- doesn't it look like the power outlets above the microwave are European-style plugs?  And I thought only US college IT departments were clueless...

     

  • Hugh Brown (unregistered) in reply to Bruce

    I was working at MKS in Waterloo, Ontario, in 1992. Back then, MKS had installed a miraculous wireless network connection that linked the offices on Erb Street to the main office on King Street North the previous fall.It was such a wonder that it had even been covered in the local papers and was a source of company pride.

    But, working over on Erb Street, I started to notice that the network would go down like clockwork at 19:00-ish in the evening in July-August. And then the network would come back up twenty or thirty minutes later, equally predictably.

    It turned out to be a seasonal problem: it was discovered that the sun swung around to the northwest in the late summer and flooded out the receiver down on Erb Street...

     

  • Solo (unregistered) in reply to AdT
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    All you need to do now is build a Faraday cage into the walls of the microwave room, and you're set!
     

    A Faraday cage shields the inside of the cage from outside fields, not vice versa.

    Well then, you just need to build the cage inside out. Do I have to point to the obvious all the time :)

    Captcha: photogenic
     

  • (cs) in reply to Tommy
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    All you need to do now is build a Faraday cage into the walls of the microwave room, and you're set!
     

    A Faraday cage shields the inside of the cage from outside fields, not vice versa.

    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).


    By conducting electrically over the entire cage, it tends to equalise the electric potential.  This has the effect of reflecting electric fields.  It doesn't, however, kill the signal.
    If the cage is earthed, then it equalises (much as it can) with the earth potential.  A cage around an emitter actually becomes a poorly-coupled antenna.

    Going the other way:
    Personnel can work live on very high voltage power lines, by being housed entirely within a metal cage that is connected to the power line they're working on.  The cage and everything within it have very high electric potential (same as and in sync with the power line itself) but being a closed cage, the entire electric field within the cage is the same; there's no potential difference between any two points within the cage.  Without the cage, the electric field in the air close to said lines would do nasty things to you, even without any arcing or physical contact.  
    I'm talking very high voltage, and very close proximity - and I disagree with most people who complain about power lines and mobile phone towers.. they usually don't think about the mathematics of it.


  • Roberto (unregistered) in reply to unklegwar

    The real WTF is that students can't be bothered to work 20 hours (assuming minimum wage) to buy their own $100 microwave. Seriously, 20 hours.. that's not even a week's worth of overtime.

  • not a poster (unregistered) in reply to AdT

    uh. definitely not. The cage also protects the outside from the contents of the inside.

    There is a  science place in my old home (scitech, perth, australia) which has a tesla coil inside a faraday cage.  take it outside, and computers nearby stop working.

    or the test they demonstrate with, place a fluoresent tube inside the cage, near the generator and it lights up.  Take it outside the cage and it does not. 

  • (cs) in reply to Roberto

    Anonymous:
    The real WTF is that students can't be bothered to work 20 hours (assuming minimum wage) to buy their own $100 microwave. Seriously, 20 hours.. that's not even a week's worth of overtime.
    <font size="+1">Y</font>es, but it's also several pitchers of beer.

     

  • CountChocula (unregistered)

    The reason this is a WTF is that the wireless device is mounted on four 2in metal conduits that are mostly likely grounded. This will ground (in essence) the signal and adversely affect the characteristics of the anttena.

  • WTF Alumni (unregistered)

    Wow, and the entire room appears to be made out of concrete (it's a basement right?)

    I thought that was going to be the WTF, but no, the six microwaves take the cake.

  • DeeK (unregistered) in reply to Solo
    Anonymous:

    Well then, you just need to build the cage inside out. Do I have to point to the obvious all the time :)

     No no no!  You've got it all wrong.  It's just a matter of definition.  If a Faraday cage only blocks signals going into an enclosure,  define the emitter as outside, and the whole world as being enclosed.  Then surely the signal can not pass.   No need to build any fancy inside out cages.
     

  • rob_squared (unregistered) in reply to AdT
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    All you need to do now is build a Faraday cage into the walls of the microwave room, and you're set!
     

    A Faraday cage shields the inside of the cage from outside fields, not vice versa.

     

    I want you to sit in the corner and think about what you just said.  You sound like Al from Home Improvement (Tool Time). 

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Roberto
    Anonymous:
    The real WTF is that students can't be bothered to work 20 hours (assuming minimum wage) to buy their own $100 microwave. Seriously, 20 hours.. that's not even a week's worth of overtime.

    We weren't allowed to have microwaves in our rooms when I was living in a dorm.
  • (cs) in reply to Brian
    Anonymous:
    It's actually South Harmon Institute of Technology.

    Yes, I recently saw "Accepted". Funny stuff...

    Proud to be a SHIT-head. :)


    After many many years, they finally changed the Western Australian Institute of Technology to Curtin University of Technology; I do believe for a moment, they briefly flirted with the idea of prefacing said technology with the term "new", and (un?)fortunately thought better of it: http://www.curtin.edu.au/
  • (cs) in reply to savar
    savar:

    Anonymous:
    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.

    Frat boys don't live in dorms...they live in FRATS.*



    um, is that a stereotypical Oriental flat? : P
  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous

    Anonymous:
    We weren't allowed to have microwaves in our rooms when I was living in a dorm.

    No problems with that here... only noteworthy restrictions I can think of at the moment is halogen bulbs are banned as a fire hazard... which is odd since normal light bulbs get about 100x hotter, wtf.  Then we have a ban on candles, understandable.  Next a ban on fish tanks over 10 gallons, also understandable (just think of the poor computer geek with his 10 machines who lives directly under you when your aquarium shatters).

  • (cs) in reply to The MAZZTer

    Addendum: We don't have WIFI in the dorms but several people have set up routers, which I imagine I could always tap into if I had a WIFI laptop or something... I pity someone who opens his router to have someone else abuse it and get the router's MAC address banned... oh well.

    We do have WIFI in several common buildings though, including the student center and the library.  Because I am a library staff person I sat in on a demonstration of the new WIFI in the library.  You have to download some stupid complex proprietary application though to use it, called Odyssey I believe.  It allows ITS to use their existing student accounts for authentication, but you have to disable Windows XP's built-in wireless internet stuff to do it (AFTER using it to download Odyssey first) and some other weird stuff I forget.  I mean I understand they need username/password authentication and I don't know much about wireless networks but certainly it must be possible to block all traffic, watch for HTTP requests, redirect to an authentication page, and then unblock everything if a valid auth is received.  Don't fight XP, developers, work with the existing tech that people are familiar with!
     

  • Per (unregistered) in reply to Bruce
    Anonymous:

    Observation -- doesn't it look like the power outlets above the microwave are European-style plugs?  And I thought only US college IT departments were clueless...

    Niklas B is also a typical swedish name, so I'd go for a Swedish University's Common Kitchen. I don't think there is mych difference in US/swedish IT-departments apart from the language and the smell och pickled herring...

     

     

     

  • (cs)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    Achieving such low wireless performance is not an easy task, especially when using the commercial-grade wireless equipment that WTFU purchased.

    No amount of high-quality-ness can stand up to complete incompetence. Build a WLAN router that's somehow completely immune to microwave oven-induced interference, and someone will still screw it up. (Hint: at least they didn't put the WLAN in the microwave.)

    Alex Papadimoulis:

    Finding a proprietary wireless authentication application that manages to freeze any computer unlucky enough to drop the wireless signal is an even bigger challenge.

    Horray for a software-based WTF in the midst of hardware/networking WTFs. And not really a challenge considering the other software WTFs we've seen here. Maybe Paula wrote it :-) .

    Alex Papadimoulis:

    It may not be clear from the picture, but that particular corner hosts six microwaves, a freezer, a refrigerator, and, of course, the router. The rest of the room is chock full of electrical appliances from a sandwich maker to a blender.

    Surely, they've had cases with the microwaves screwing each other up too. (If radiation can leak out and screw up WLAN connections, then who's to say it can't leak in? Imagine what happens to your lunch when it gets a double dose because J. Random Clueless throws his hotpocket or whatever in the microwave right above/next to the one you're using.) And so close to the fridge/freezer too. I'm sure the ice loves the microwaves just as much as the WLAN does.

    Alex Papadimoulis:

    Before the move, the six microwaves, freezer, refrigerator, and wireless router were all on the same circuit.

    As someone else pointed out, a WTF that these big boys don't have dedicated circuits.

    Alex Papadimoulis:

    Since the breaker trips several times a week (imagine that!), the router would get taken offline with everything else.

    At least it wasn't an old fusebox. Does any place use fuses anymore?

    Alex Papadimoulis:

    The good news is that, now, they have a good hour or two of wireless <font color="red">non-</font>connectivity before maintenance comes to open the breaker.

    Fixed.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to aquanight
    aquanight:
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    The good news is that, now, they have a good hour or two of wireless <font color="red">non-</font>connectivity before maintenance comes to open the breaker.

    Fixed.

     

    No, the students got the good connectivity after the breaker had been blown (closed), and before maintenance came to open (reset) the breaker.  With the breaker closed, the microwaves were off, but the router was still on, on a different circuit. 

  • Rich (unregistered) in reply to Kibi
    Anonymous:
    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.

    Sadly, that's an urban myth - the same story gets told about the City University Of Nottingham on Trent - but an insanely funny one.  :-)

  • sprx (unregistered) in reply to shadowman
    shadowman:
    Anonymous:

    Hey, if he doesn't like WTFU, he should transfer to South Texas Finance University and quit whining.

     

    Is that near the Sam Houston Institute of Technology? 

     

    I was building the accronym in my head ... and wondered what it could possibly mean. Couldn't figure it out. So I typed it into wikipedia.

     Now I got it.

     

    CAPTCHA: error
     

  • noname (unregistered) in reply to aquanight
    aquanight:

    Surely, they've had cases with the microwaves screwing each other up too. (If radiation can leak out and screw up WLAN connections, then who's to say it can't leak in? Imagine what happens to your lunch when it gets a double dose because J. Random Clueless throws his hotpocket or whatever in the microwave right above/next to the one you're using.) And so close to the fridge/freezer too. I'm sure the ice loves the microwaves just as much as the WLAN does.

     

     

    uhm, if a microwave leaked enough radiation to do that, it wouldn't be very fsafe to use around the house. I feel perfectly comfortable putting my face directly against the microwave door to see what is happening inside. I can still see (and think) after all these years. Yes there is leakage, but no significant leakage when it comes to power levels. It isn't that hard to interfere with radio signals however. And a microwave is practically a fountain of interference when you look at it like that.

    What they should do is put wireless router in the freezer (power line to the light). I guarantee it no longer has any interference from the microwave or any other significant source of radio interference.

     

  • (cs) in reply to The MAZZTer
    The MAZZTer:

    Anonymous:
    We weren't allowed to have microwaves in our rooms when I was living in a dorm.

    No problems with that here... only noteworthy restrictions I can think of at the moment is halogen bulbs are banned as a fire hazard... which is odd since normal light bulbs get about 100x hotter, wtf.  Then we have a ban on candles, understandable.  Next a ban on fish tanks over 10 gallons, also understandable (just think of the poor computer geek with his 10 machines who lives directly under you when your aquarium shatters).

     

    I've a feeling officially the rules at my college say no electrical appliances at all. In practice kettles are considered OK, full-size fridges will require permission. microwaves probably won't get it. No candles either, and throwing a 5-litre water bomb in someone's room is generally frowned upon (it's been done). I soldered in my room last year though.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to savar
    savar:

    Anonymous:
    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.

    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



    Or UNLV or quite a few colleges on or near the West Coast. 

  • (cs) in reply to Kiasyn

    Now, back in my day ...

    When I was in college, some of the women lived in a dormitory that had been a big old hotel.  It was still wired with 120 volts DC current.  All the outlets were the same as normal.  You could plug in a lamp, but if you plugged in a hair dryer it would burn out.  You needed a DC-to-AC converter.

    So you're old, what's the WTF about that, you ask.  What's the WTF is that this was in 1973.

     

  • htrrhh (unregistered)

    The real WTF is that you think that thing is a router.  It is an access point.

  • UNR Student (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    savar:

    Anonymous:
    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.

    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



    Or UNLV or quite a few colleges on or near the West Coast. 

    UNLV SUCKS!

    /UNR student, network up here sucks, limit of two devices on the network so only my laptop and main desktop can access the interweb, goes down alot.

  • (cs)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    Achieving such low wireless performance is not an easy task, especially when using the commercial-grade wireless equipment that WTFU purchased.

     

    Ahh, so this is how they funded the commercial grade equipment, by masquerading as the world's leading luxury lifestyle group...

    http://www.lse.co.uk/shareprice.asp?shareprice=WTFU&share=waterford_wedgwd/wtfd_wedgwd_uk_plcuts(1_ww_ord_eur0.06&1_ww_uk_s/r_inc) 

  • (cs)

    Six microwaves, a fridge and a freezer. Right. Any hot plates or ovens? Or are those considered surplus to requirements nowadays?


  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
     

    No, the students got the good connectivity after the breaker had been blown (closed), and before maintenance came to open (reset) the breaker.  With the breaker closed, the microwaves were off, but the router was still on, on a different circuit. 


    A breaker that is closed is "on".  When a breaker trips ("blows"), it opens (the circuit), stopping the electrickery from flowing.
  • James Schend (unregistered) in reply to aquanight

    >At least it wasn't an old fusebox. Does any place use fuses anymore?

     My 1927 house still has a couple on one of the kitchen circuits. I'm not sure if you can still buy fuses for it (although the house came with 2 spares), so I just wired the 30-amp fuses behind a 20-amp breaker... so (in theory), the breaker will cut the circuit off before the fuse blows and I won't ever need to look for a new one.

     Of course, I could just solder a wire in the fuse box anyway since (again in theory) the breaker would prevent anything dangerous from happening. But I'm not an expert, so I'll play it safe.

     I also have live cloth-insulated wires in the basement, and asbestos all over the place. Probably some lead paint, too, but it's a couple of paint-layers deep by now.

  • (cs) in reply to Roberto
    Anonymous:
    The real WTF is that students can't be bothered to work 20 hours (assuming minimum wage) to buy their own $100 microwave. Seriously, 20 hours.. that's not even a week's worth of overtime.

    I'm pretty certain that minimum wage is a fair bit more than US$5 anywhere in the developed world...
  • (cs) in reply to rsynnott

    Oh, there's a technical college here called Tallaght Institute of Technology. At some point someone presumably noticed the unfortunate acronym, and renamed it 'IT Tallaght'. They still have the coveted 'tit.ie' domain tho. (There have been a few weird college renamings here lately. UCD, standing for University College Dublin, now has 'UCD Dublin', presumably standing for University College Dublin Dublin, on its logo.)

  • (cs) in reply to UNR Student

    Anonymous:
    UNLV SUCKS!

    /UNR student, network up here sucks, limit of two devices on the network so only my laptop and main desktop can access the interweb, goes down alot.

     "Only" two? Sheesh... at PSU, we got one wired connection in the dorm. No wireless there. (Some of the classroom buildings and the student union have it.) If you wanted to hook up more devices, you'd have to get a cable modem router or something like that. Though that's against the university network policies.

     
    This isn't like a "when I was in school, I had to carry my packets uphill both ways through a 2800 baud modem" post either... I just graduated a couple months ago... 

  • (cs) in reply to rsynnott
    rsynnott:
    Anonymous:
    The real WTF is that students can't be bothered to work 20 hours (assuming minimum wage) to buy their own $100 microwave. Seriously, 20 hours.. that's not even a week's worth of overtime.

    I'm pretty certain that minimum wage is a fair bit more than US$5 anywhere in the developed world...

    Um, minimum wage in the US is $5.15 in most states. So it works out to be about 19 hours and 25 minutes. Of course, if you factor in, say, a 5.15% tax, a $100 microwave takes 20:25... (Though $100 is pretty expensive. Mine was about $60 IIRC, and it's pretty nice. You can get more powerful, but it's not bad.)

  • Gil Freund (unregistered) in reply to Krenn
    Anonymous:
    All you need to do now is build a Faraday cage into the walls of the microwave room, and you're set!

    Save expense, build it around the router....

  • (cs) in reply to aquanight
    aquanight:
    At least it wasn't an old fusebox. Does any place use fuses anymore?
    Where I live, fuses are still common, at least in old houses (and there's a lot of old houses around). Breakers only started spreading very recently - our flat, where the electricity was completely renovated about 14 years ago, still has a panel with about 20 fuses and a FID switch (all neatly hidden behind a picture). I'm just moving to my own place, and found out there's no earthing in most outlets, and that about half of the wires are still made of lead.

    Is it just me, or does this editor eat random keystrokes?
  • Phil (unregistered)

    My old school, Stevens Institute of Technology, was originally named the Stevens Hoboken Institute of Technology when it was founded in 1870.  Some years later, a certain other engineering school started referring to itself by its initials, this practice began to catch on, and Stevens' trustees changed the name remarkably quickly.

  • Olddog (unregistered)

    Funny... how the reflection on the wall ( in the picture ) doesn't match up with objects in the foreground. I smell PhotoShop.

  • I have the hat to this day. I have the hat. (unregistered) in reply to James Schend

    My old house had fuses and only had two wire wiring. You had to get those adapter-thingies to plug in stuff that had a ground plug. Of course there was nothing to connect the ground thingy from the adapters to--you just kept your fingers crossed. It had rubber insulation in some places, but cloth? Now that's just scary. Lead paint? Oh sure, but no asbestos.

    Ah the joys of old houses.

  • (cs) in reply to I have the hat to this day. I have the hat.

    The flat I'm moving to has schuko outlets, except that the earth is just connected to the neutral - "A standard practice in old houses" according to the electrician I called.

  • (cs) in reply to Spike
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    No, don't go there. Please visit the Boston Academy of Special Technologies And Related Disciplines.

     

    In Baltimore there is school called the College Of Notre Dame Of Maryland. Its a Catholic school.... 

    LOL, it really exists! Googled it and found this on the home page. Glad to know that "<font color="#000000">How to Pay for College: The College will participate in Rep. Elijah E. Cummings’ “How to Pay for College” seminar December 8 from 6 to 8 p.m. at Maryland Institute College of Art. </font>"

  • (cs) in reply to I have the hat to this day. I have the hat.

    My old house had fuses and only had two wire wiring. You had to get those adapter-thingies to plug in stuff that had a ground plug. Of course there was nothing to connect the ground thingy from the adapters to--you just kept your fingers crossed. It had rubber insulation in some places, but cloth? Now that's just scary. Lead paint? Oh sure, but no asbestos.

    Ah the joys of old houses.

     

    My favourite is replacing cracked ceiling roses and discovering where the branches of the lighting circuit were put...

    I wonder what joys await me when a socket blows because I'm still using Bakelite fuseholders kept in a wooden box nailed into the wall with a faded piece of paper saying what each circuit is (on the other side is the slightly updated version. Both are wrong. As is the version Sellotaped to the inside of the door). An estate agent declared my house (built in 1957) as unsellable because of the poor quality circuitry, which can only help when the revaluation comes into force >:)

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