Yes, but then it’s slower for your computer to talk back to your Wi-Fi, so it ends up cancelling out
Improve your Wi-Fi with this one trick
Submitted 4 weeks ago by The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/13257ae7-01cc-4456-aac1-55094f7aad41.jpeg
Comments
brown567@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
KryptoSynth@ani.social 4 weeks ago
Lag@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
We can streamline this by making the room into 2 small tunnels from the router to the PC. This way there will be less obstacles in the room. But we need to add leafblowers on each side with a boost button.
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Full duplex airflow signal enhancement
ToyDork@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
RoRo stations. Roll on, roll off/out. The internet isn’t a highway, it’s a series of bullet trains in tube tunnels.
I wonder if anyone thinks OpenTTD would be more fun with a cyberspace theme? I know there’s a neon grid grf (mod)…
Anyway, if this was a suitable solution for WiFi, we wouldn’t need wired connections. That said, you can cut open a drink can to turn a WiFi router’s signal into a focused beam using the aluminum, iirc.
DogWater@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Interestingly, this could be true and you could never find out experimentally iirc.
I watched a veritasium video about the 1 way speed of light vs 2 way that talked about it.
antimongo@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I watched the same video!
I was right about to disagree and type “wait this only applies to light” but then I remembered: radio is light.
Crazy to think about that!
carl_dungeon@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
There are some stupid questions.
darthelmet@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Tbf, it’s not like physics stuff is always obvious, especially when dealing with relativity or quantum mechanics. It just feels obvious if you’ve already learned about the research that’s already been done.
It isn’t even remotely intuitive that light should have a max speed that can’t be added to by moving its source relative to other things. Plus, light does interact with matter, but it can only be slowed down by it.
So less a stupid question and more just one that isn’t educated about something.
carl_dungeon@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Yeah yeah, I know. I was mostly just kidding. Everything is magic if you’re ignorant and we shouldn’t shit on people for not knowing something and props to them for asking and seeking knowledge and all that.
But it’s really sad that very basic science like radio waves which are introduced in 5th or 6th grade could be some completely misunderstood.
I remember my 6th grade science class having a lively 15 minute discussion about whether or not rockets can work in space since there’s no air…. We’re looking at videos of rockets working in space and then debating whether or not they do. 🙄
theUwUhugger@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Quantum physics is not logical, every other field of physics is! Shame that instead of logic we are taught fucking equations, as if we could look up logical conclusions like equations…
TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Yeah, what if I’m moving my router at the speed of light, not so intuitive now
eating3645@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Even less intuitively, the fan would increase the air pressure between the router and receiver, slowing light down slightly. So it would end up (imperceptibly) slowing the signal down.
webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 4 weeks ago
On the contrary, given the premise its a smart observation from an unknownledged person.
“Wifi is waves in the air” is very very wrong but as it appears it’s what this person was thought to believe. Given that they trust this information the conclusion makes perfect sense.
The only “dumb” here is whoever explain wifi like this to them.
So what the post really amounts to is. “I applied actual reasoning to the information i was provided as fact and my conclusion seemed strange, so i will ask on no stupid questions to figure out whats really going on”
Dabundis@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
“I don’t know, can anyone help me learn?” gets so much respect from me. Incredibly powerful mindset.
Willy@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
it obv goes through the ether
jol@discuss.tchncs.de 4 weeks ago
This is not stupid at all. If Wi-Fi used matter instead of magnetic fields to propagate (like sound waves), a fan would affect it. Understanding magnetic fields is anything but intuitive.
Lyricism6055@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Agreed, it’s just someone trying to learn.
Alternatively I would guess if fans improved the speed we’d have wifi fans throughout the house. Gaming wifi fans that sound like an airplane taking off with blinding LEDs
Imagine…
Zwiebel@feddit.org 4 weeks ago
I mean technically the weather influences your ping, since the waves travel faster at higher air pressure
henfredemars@infosec.pub 4 weeks ago
I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic but this is not true. Electromagnetic waves travel fastest in a vacuum, so the presence of air would slow it down very slightly and I would expect higher air pressure would slow it down further again only incredibly slightly because the electromagnetic waves would be traveling through a medium less efficient and more different than a vacuum.
Of course I’m making an assumption that you were using wireless signals. For all I know, you could have some weird acoustic link in which case you’d be absolutely right.
roguetrick@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
They would travel slower at high pressure and high temperature due to more interactions. Low temp and low pressure are the opposite. Sound is also the opposite on pressure and more complicated on temperature.
qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 4 weeks ago
Not at all in this case though! Or rather, it depends on your perspective.
“Why doesn’t electricity leak out the outlet?” is a good question, if you know nothing about electricity.
“Why doesn’t electricity leak out the outlet?” is a little stupid, if you know a little about electricity.
“Why doesn’t electricity leak out the outlet?” is a great question if you know a bit more about electricity (because it does leak out, it’s just that 50/60Hz doesn’t couple to freespace well unless you have a colossal antenna).
As to this question, light in a moving media: preprints.opticaopen.org/articles/…/25441108?file…
saltesc@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Oh, wow. You really triggered them this time.
skittle07crusher@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Esp those pushed to devices with the form factor of a remote control, running the official reddit app
tyrefyre@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Yeah, but it evens out since now your messages going back to the router have to swim upstream.
SomethingBurger@jlai.lu 4 weeks ago
Could this be remedied by sending packets on a second antenna, with a fan blowing in the opposite direction?
GhostlyPixel@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Only if the two air streams don’t intersect, otherwise you’ll create a dead zone. Modern signal jammers are actually highly sophisticated fans.
Narauko@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Yes, but the tailwind becomes a headwind on the way back to the router so you won’t see any actual speed changes. Putting a fan on both ends will cancel each other out too.
You need to change all the gaseous air out for either liquid or a solid as waves propagate faster through them. You should start with filling your house with liquid oxygen as a nice half step so you still have something to breathe easily, as solids are a bit more tricky.
svenkw@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
The general idea is correct, but since we’re dealing with electronagnetic waves, they travel slower in any medium. So pumping out all the air of the room would technically make your wifi faster.
Liquid oxygen has (I think) a refractive index of about 1.2, so it would make the signals 20% slower (still very fast)
BastingChemina@slrpnk.net 4 weeks ago
What if i put the router in front of an open window, open the window behind my computer and put a fan between the two ?
Rooty@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
No, the fan will blow the packets all over the place, which is fine for UDP, but any TCP/IP connection will suffer. Place the fan in front of the router so that the blades will catch any dropped packets an throw them back into the datastream.
tetris11@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
uh, hi. If you place the blades in front of the router, it will start chopping the packets before they even reach. You need to use an bladeless fan
LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Alright so I’ve now got a router using cell towards hardwired into a Roomba randomly roaming so everyone gets shitty connections all the time.
terminhell@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Just gotta adjust the MTU and fan RPM
piper11@feddit.org 4 weeks ago
No need, that’s why we have the Don’t Fragment bit in the IP header
LordWiggle@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Everyone know that.
Zaphod@discuss.tchncs.de 4 weeks ago
Not inherently stupid question; they just don’t know that radio waves don’t travel through air but through space.
ximtor@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
But air is empty space?! /s
affiliate@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
they just don’t know that radio waves don’t travel through air but through space
does this mean radio waves can go to mars? if so, why don’t we ride them to mars?
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
You’d need a very small saddle.
lukewarm_ozone@lemmy.today 4 weeks ago
It’s not much of a stupid question even given that - for a refractive medium, speed of light can change with its movement. Though for air it’ll be extremely hard to directly notice; it has n≈1.0003 so speed of light in air is already 0.9997c, and increasing it to, say, 0.9998c would require moving the air at 0.166c.
Chee_Koala@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Stupid laws of nature, making everything cool super hard and expensive!
onnekas@sopuli.xyz 4 weeks ago
What is space exactly?
roguetrick@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Depends on the direction the fan is facing. If it’s blowing towards you, that increases air pressure in front of it, which means more things for photons to interact with and a lower speed of light, thus slower wifi. Away from you would decrease the pressure and result in faster wifi due to the increased speed of light. Theoretically at least. I don’t think this effect is measurable.
cmhe@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Yes, but only in one direction and if you use UDP instead of TCP, also your MTU needs to be small enough for the packages to fit between the blades of the fan, otherwise that causes package fragmentation.
/s
BenLeMan@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Sort of a serious answer because I’m bored: You’re thinking of speeding up the air when what you should be thinking about is speeding up the waves. But then your waves are reaching you plenty fast already with latency being in the single digit ms range. Not much of a point in trying to accelerate that, really. You won’t notice anyway.
If you feel like your internet connection via Wi-Fi is slow then the bottleneck is probably not with the Wi-Fi part of your network but the Internet Access Point behind it. Or even further down the line.
Now this is based on the assumption that you are in a fairly typical network environment, i.e. using semi-current hardware with moderate, if any, electromagnetic interference in the area. If you’re living right next to a high voltage transformer station and using a router from 2008 then, yes, you’re going to have Wi-Fi performance issues.
But in most cases, people complaining about “slow Wi-Fi” are actually suffering from Internet connectivity issues.
Think of it this way: If you enjoy your McDonald’s from the local franchise but you can only get 100 burgers per hour from them (of course you need MOAR!) then upgrading your 320hp Camaro to a 400hp Mustang is not going to enable you to pick up appreciably more burgers from the drive through in the same amount of time.
Jezza@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Not entirely true.
In an apartment in the middle of a city, noisy neighbours can be a problem.In those cases, it’s best to jump to 5 GHz, and leave the 2.4 band alone.
BenLeMan@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Except if you have an ECOVACS cleaning robot which refuses to work with modern 5GHz networks. I actually had to install a Wi-Fi bridge to get around that limitation; thankfully, I still had one lying around. Helped me get a better signal for my phone in the bathroom as well.
But thank you for adding this information. Congestion due to interference from other networks (I guess that’s what you meant) can definitely be a factor as well. I guess that’s the problem with the notion of “normal” that I employed rather carelessly.
Sidenote: the fact that your Wi-Fi still works in those conditions at all instead of shutting down goes back to pioneering research done by actress-cum-scientist Hedy Lamarr during WW2. Amazing woman.
lemonskate@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
There are plenty of things in a normal home that can cause serious signal attenuation (just installed new energy efficient windows? whoops! those IR blocking coatings severely attenuate microwave signals too). Poor AP placement is a very common cause of “slow wifi” and has nothing to do with your internet uplink.
BenLeMan@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Again, you point out why “normal” is an iffy notion to begin with. Thank you for elaborating instead of just downvoting. 🙂
Failing to fully utilize the existing antenna diversity options on modern routers/APs might be another common cause that comes to mind.
brown567@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
If you had a fan blowing out the window, it could slightly reduce the density of the air in your house, leading to a tiny increase in the speed of light through it, so that would make the waves technically faster, but by a vanishingly small margin
It wouldn’t increase the bitrate of your router at all, so it wouldn’t make a difference, but the waves would be faster
VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Bitrate wouldn’t change, but it would reduce latency by a tiny amount.
0x0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
With less matter for the photons to interact with, I assume the WiFi’s SNR would be improved. If fewer data frames need to be retransmitted at the link layer (WiFi), I figure the apparent bitrate at the IP level might actually be improved!
Actually, I would not be shocked if WiFi itself adapts to conditions, e.g. by sending less data per frame with more error correction bits when SNR is already low.
(Not a networking expert, I am just bullshitting.)
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
The Wifi isn’t waves made of air, the wifi is waves of the electromagnetic spectrum, similar to visible light, and they travel faster than you can perceive.
So no.
But you can do something similar with a microwave oven. It’s just that any signal making it through the radiation of the oven would be disfigured and useless.
dukeofdummies@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I mean, that was my first thought… but would there be a measurable difference?
I mean lets be clear, with a fan you’re adding like 8 mph to something going 299,792,458 meters per second. You won’t notice anything.
But like, vacuum vs glass vs glass moving half the speed of light, could be an interesting what if. Relativity is always where my mind glosses over in physics.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Unless the air particles make real contact with the photons then you’re not adding anything to anything.
Zoldyck@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I like this question tbh
WalnutLum@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
Yes but you have to put a slit in front of it so the wifi waves turn into wifi particles.
IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
Not gonna lie, I thought about that, but I didn’t wanna risk sounding stupid, so I just google it instead of posting it on a forum. Luckily I didn’t actually make a forum post.
LordWiggle@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
It’s not 1 way traffic. Signals go both ways. What to increase your wifi speeds, have 1 fan blow from your router to your device and 1 fan from your device blow towards your router. Signals go faster in warm air so make sure to pump up the thermostat. It also goes faster with less CO2 in the air so make sure to open all windows (unless you own a Mac). Lower moisture in the air also improves speeds, so turn your AC on max. Also placing both your router and device in rice helps.
serenissi@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
device in rice
Say that in any linux forum :)
Zachariah@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
WiFi is waves in space, not air.
_stranger_@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Followup: Can I get a fan that moves space instead of air? I need to make my wifi faster.
Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de 4 weeks ago
You can define your fan to be moving space and the pushing of air is the side-effect.
knacht1@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Check on Amazon for a “Space fan”.
Zaphod@discuss.tchncs.de 4 weeks ago
Just have a miniature wormhole connect your PC directly to the server
niktemadur@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Waves in the electromagnetic field that permeates all of space, along with many other fields with different topologies and particles.
aeronmelon@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Gotta get me one of those oscillating routers.
henfredemars@infosec.pub 4 weeks ago
They do kind of oscillate, just very very quickly.
eager_eagle@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
and you can speedup your upload by switching the fan direction
NorthWestWind@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
If you can create a vacuum with said fan, it can be faster.
GladiusB@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Maybe if you made this vacuum encapsulated in a line. Surrounded by shielded metal and plastic.
DJDarren@thelemmy.club 4 weeks ago
This might sound stupid, but that’s because it is.
Empricorn@feddit.nl 4 weeks ago
Remember: These people vote.
LordWiggle@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Reminder: most voters are the people.
circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org 4 weeks ago
No but if you fill the room with water then it should be way faster
silver_wings_of_morning@feddit.dk 4 weeks ago
If it changes the air pressure, changing the refractive index, it will affect how fast the waves will travel. If you put it behind the router blowing towards the computer, does that increase the pressure? Then it would slow down I think. But this would only make a difference for a single wave packet; any real connection sends many packets and would be limited by the frequency of packets sent.
jia_tan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 weeks ago
I hope this is the final straw for OP to finally delete the app that shall not be named
Treczoks@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
It is amazing with how little to none in education is sufficient to finish school nowadays.
IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
I learned more from the internet than everything that public school taught me. That’s not to say we should stop funding school, but in fact, we should fund it better, and have more qualified teachers.
If I make an analogy between a wikipedia article, knowledge I learned. I would say that public school taught the eqivalent of the summary paragraph at the top of a wikipedia page, while the internet taught me the rest of the page. That’s how much school just don’t teach.
Example, School didn’t teach: (This is the USA btw)
- Ranked Choice voting (or any alternative voting method, for that matter)
- National Popular Vote Interstate Compact
- Citizen’s United ruling
- Although they did teach 5th & 6th amendments and Miranda Warning, they didn’t be specific and teach the fact that you have to specifically invoke your right to silence. Just remaining silent itself can be used as evidence of guilt.
Amonst many things
School definitely doesn’t teach how wifi works, or even how technology works in general. School never taugh about the fact that you shouldn’t ignore HTTPS warnings. I’m pretty sure like 99% of my school would just instictively click pass an HTTPS warning and just get their info stolen, although we do have HSTS now so we should be better now, but still, there are many other phishing that almost all of my school-mates would fall for, and they wouldn’t even think to scan the sender address or do any verification that its legit.
Treczoks@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
My (European) school education at least taught me that speed of light (and therefore other electromagnetic radiation, too) can be assumed to be the speed of light without any measurable difference applied by the medium it is passing through.
SparrowRanjitScaur@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
How do you know that redditor finished school? There are kids on the Internet.
4oreman@lemy.lol 4 weeks ago
yes.
Doorbook@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
So if I put a fan behind a source of light, shouldn’t that make the particles faster?
niktemadur@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Yeah but it’s gonna scramble your signal, then send it spinning outwards.
hperrin@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
Technically?
No.
smokebuddy@lemmy.today 4 weeks ago
^yes^ but ~pages~ will ^render^ kinda ~wavy~ i ^use^ a ~box~ fan ^myself^ for ~maximum~ speed