Techie fixed Wi-Fi dead zone with a drill

Welcome to another edition of On Call, The Register's reader-contributed column that celebrates the fine art of tech support. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Eddy," the one-person IT department for an assisted living company. "I have had quite a bit of trouble creating a stable Wi-Fi network," he admitted to On Call …

[Korev]

Time for some puns - you know the drill

[Korev]

Was it just a drill or did he use a router too?

[steelpillow]

You're getting to the rout of the problem there.

[Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch]

You can solve anything if you chuck resources at it.

[Penfold42]

Which reminds me of the confused looks of my network engineering colleagues in the late 90s when I told them "over the weekend I had to change the switch in my router".

Not sure telling them it was a 1/2" 600 Watt router clarified anything...

[GlenP]

Back when I was working in Detroit I generally made a point of pronouncing router, as in the networking appliance, in the UK way, as rooter. I finally decided I'd been there too long when I pronounced it rowter one day.

[Anonymous Coward]

Networking device: pronounced rooter, likened to the roots of a tree - spreading everywhere, linking things together.

Woodworking tool: pronounced rowter, because when it goes wrong you shout (although "ouch" is probably a bit mild - in my case it was "fuck" shortly followed by "oh, that's actually a bit of bone sticking out")

(icon -> the effect of a different power tool on your fingers)

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

I guess that should be the correct way , because calling the tool "rooter" as the UK does seems like a meaningless and confusing name -whats it got to do with routes ?

Americans manage to have the two pronunciations and still get them wrong - they pronounce Route-66 correctly , but when that same pronunciation should clearly be used in "Paper route" ( you know delivering papers on a bicycle) they get it wrong and revert to Rowt!

[that one in the corner]

Blame the habit of playing Golden Oldies on the radio/MTV/streaming service of your choice for getting things correct (if a really popular modern beat combo released a cover where they'd sung "I get my kicks on rowt-66" that'd risk soon becoming the norm[1]).

As for the getting it wrong part: I blame phonics. And only doing the first half of the task: "ok, sound it out, those letters say", not bothering with the second half: "Good, now say it all together; what word does that sound like?".[2]

I hope they paid Patrick Stewart a *lot* to mispronounce "buoy", given the Yanks used to get it right when it *really* mattered, in the better team of the old B&W war movies.

[1] Hey, Norm!

[2] waiting to hear it pronounced "wed-snes-day", which is ridiculous as the Mega Drive was the only one worth mentioning

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

> "wed-snes-day"

T-he fam-ou-s How the English language would sound if silent letters weren’t silent... The r(ea|e)lly annoying part of English on(c|z)(e) y(o)u learn(e)d mo(a)r(e) than the averag(e).

Together with the "when it E pronounced I" and "When is I pronounces Ay" and several ot-her combina(t|sch)ions with "Depending on the mood, moon phase and state of Bosons" pronunciations.

[steelpillow]

> calling the tool "rooter" as the UK does

Load of cobblers, me old china. Here on the proper side of the Pond we pronounce the tool "rowter". If you wanna wind up us Limeys, do your feckin' homework first.

[jake]

Back in 1986 I was tasked with shepherding one of the first commercial Ccisco routers ever built (a pilot build AGS) across the pond to Blighty. To UCL, to be precise.

It was an evaluation unit, and I was selected for the initial exposure because I was familiar with the project from the "Blue Box" stage at Stanford to current ... AND because I had spent a good deal of my life in England, so didn't have any of the supposed communications issues, (as often amusingly detailed here on ElReg).

My local counterpart and I installed the thing, verified functionality, and the next morning they brought in a group of what I assume were management and other mucky-mucks. I gave the standard sales lecture, short on technical details and long on hype, and ended up with a simple "Any questions?".

One gent stuck his hand up and said "I'm terribly sorry, but you are pronouncing it incorrectly. It's called a "rooter", not a "rowter"". I was expecting this, and looked him right in the eye and said "I was at the manufacturer's facility in California not 48 hours ago. They call it a "rowter", and I think they should know". Three voices popped in from various corners of the room to say variations of "Well, they are wrong!". I just chuckled and said "Whatever. Anybody have any real questions?". A couple folks did, and I told them that we were having a more technical discussion after lunch, and they were welcome to attend, and perhaps access the keyboard. I used rowter throughout the afternoon session, and nobody said anything. We adjourned to a pub (sorry, I can't remember which one), and the discussion continued. Nobody questioned me using "rowter" ... and most of them were also using it by the time we adjourned.

I flew home the following day. Was a nice little three day interlude. Recommended.

During the meanwhile, the gent who initially raised his hand had filed a formal complaint with the guy he assumed was my Boss (he wasn't, I was self employed at the time). He actually had the audacity to tell cisco that they HAD to rename the box to rooter, or it would never sell outside the US, and that I should be relieved of my duties. Seems he had never in his entire life been dismissed so rudely (whatever). He was laughed at. The rest, as they say, is history. And you lot are still calling it by the incorrect name ... and still being laughed at.

Life's to short to sweat the petty stuff. Has the meaning been gotten across? Let it slide, relax, have a homebrew.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Did you la(i)ter have lab(e)ls ready, wif/with "rowter", "rawter" and "rauter"/"ruuter", depending on which latitude you are, also depending on whether it was negative of positive latitude? (Last two in the list is for German(t)s...)

[Daedalus]

Let's confuse things further

In the old world of PCB CAD a "router" was a program for finding optimum trace "routes" between components on the board. Americans have no problem pronouncing those two words inconsistently. Then we had a fine young Scot come and talk to us on the subject. where we heard the two terms spoken with that glorious extra resonance.

However, nowhere during my time in the industry did we hear from any Australians, which is fortunate considering the extra meaning of "rooting" down under.

[Wyliecyote]

Re: Let's confuse things further

in the UK we say Route (roote) as in driving destinations. So we say rooter because, rooting packets to destination (or not, on occasion). innit bruv. Rowter is the spinney thing that turns expensive materials into scrap, well it does when I use them anyroadup.. ttfn

[VicMortimer]

It's pronounced "rowter". A "rooter" is a plumbing tool, you shove it down pipes, it spins around and cuts out stuff that's clogging the pipe like tree roots. And the plumbing tool is spelled "rooter".

[Anonymous Coward]

it spins around and cuts out stuff that's clogging the pipe like tree roots.

And fibre optic bundles.

And gas lines.

[CountCadaver]

British pronunciation helps

Rooter for the IT kit

ROUT-er for the tool

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

is it ?

my mate whose got one seems to call the tool a router , just like his I.T. router

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Being a born & raised a Brit & now living in Canada, owning both woodworking tool & network gear I'm starting to question my sanity or at least my pronunciation for router*.

*I have a friend (Surprising I know) who just about tolerates my UK pronunciation of her name, rather than the Canadian way.

[FIA]

my mate whose got one seems to call the tool a router , just like his I.T. router

Historically, yes.

Thing is, language is fluid (and retrospectively standardised), and I suspect most Brits will encounter a 'rooter' before they encounter a 'router', so it's probably going to change slowly over time.

[Inventor of the Marmite Laser]

Either way, I hope he didn't get a reaming.

[Inventor of the Marmite Laser]

Wheel brace ourselves for the puns.

[Anonymous Coward]

I’m sure someone can chuck some into a story about drills.

[NATTtrash]

There is nothing that can not be solved with a drill and a hammer...

[UCAP]

Clearly setting up the Wifi has not been plain sailing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely the problem is PLANE to see‽‽

[Inventor of the Marmite Laser]

Close shave there.

[GlenP]

You spoke too soon!

[Will Godfrey]

Well...

Wouldn't that be rather boring?

[Korev]

Re: Well...

A bit

[Andy Taylor]

Re: Well...

Can we please clamp down on these woodworking puns? Otherwise there mitre be some saw feelings.

[Inventor of the Marmite Laser]

Re: Well...

We all have our vices.

[KarMann]

Re: Well...

You'd better brace yourself for more.

[Will Godfrey]

Re: Well...

That's a holey different drill.

[FIA]

I've been roaming around trying to find some, but my Weekly Pun Allowance seems to have been used up, this makes me SSAD.

(sorry).

[gerryg]

You've got the bit between your teeth

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

Eddies in the space-time continuum

Has Eddy checked for any of those?

I'll get me coat

[Korev]

Re: Eddies in the space-time continuum

So you're eddying to the exit?

[Antony Shepherd]

Re: Eddies in the space-time continuum

And this is his sofa, is it?

[Mishak]

"crimping the power cords"

What does that mean? Snagging?

[UCAP]

Re: "crimping the power cords"

Pinching the cables.

And no, that does not mean stealing them!

[FIA]

Re: "crimping the power cords"

They were just being nicked by the desk.

[FirstTangoInParis]

Re: "crimping the power cords"

Eddy currents were being generated

[IanRS]

WiFi dead zones

I was once on a team setting up a 'collaboration zone' where I was working on the network side, handling switches, firewalls, etc, and most of the cabling. The only parts we did not do were the WiFi access points in the false ceiling as we weren't trusted to climb step ladders. The contractors brought in for that came in, did a survey of signal strength throughout the whole area while moving the WAPS around to give the best coverage, then fastened everything down. Perfectly good professional job. Then another team came in to handle turning all the walls into giant whiteboards.This included putting thin steel sheet backed white plastic coated boards from floor to ceiling on all the partition walls. The steel backing was for sticking magnets to to hold up whatever was needed. The WAPs had ended up, unsurprisingly, down the centre-line passageway of the facility, and now no breakout room had any signal at all.

[Giles C]

Re: WiFi dead zones

Seen that the problem is, the building people want the aps installed (or at least the wiring if they have an open ceiling) before the final fit but if you don’t have the partitions in place then the signal strength is probably wrong.

Or they suddenly change the layout without telling us.

We use a company to do surveys for us (it is all they do) and sometimes they look at what is planned and then produce a plan using far fewer APs that you would have thought needed. We then get them to go round and check the building after the install to prove it works

As an aside when working at budget insurance you could go home on a Friday and come back in Monday to find the walls had moved over the weekend. Very disconcerting to walk into a building towards where your desk was and find a wall blocking your path. When I was there WiFi wasn’t as big an issue as it is now. They also rarely changed the lighting around, so you could flick a switch and the room on the other side of the corridor had lights but where you were remained dark. Nowadays a lot of lighting is motion sensor activated which goes round that problem.

.

[Anonymous Custard]

Re: WiFi dead zones

I would wonder if you work in our building here, except that whilst our lights are on motion sensors, those are now commonly in entirely the wrong place as the areas where people sit and walk have changed completely from the original. The sight of people ending up sitting in the dark, or periodically having to either get up or flail around like a drowning person to remind the building that they're actually still there and need illumination.

And don't even get me started on stud partition walls vs air conditioning/heating, with thermometers in one area driving heating/cooling in what is now basically a separate and isolated area.

Some offices like fridges, some like saunas and other areas where the temperature is basically random.

[blu3b3rry]

Re: WiFi dead zones

Sounds like the building I used to work in. The AC and lights are so cross-wired that alternating rows of desks effectively have their own microclimate, ranging between freezing cold and sauna. The lights are a mixture of switched and motion activated, and appear to have been connected almost at random into the panel downstairs to the extent no-one knows what most of the breakers do.

The best one was when the total dickhead of a facilities manager we had at the time insisted to the contractors that a partition wall be placed *here*, ignoring the fact that there was a ceiling mounted air conditioning unit mounted directly above where the partition wall was to be fitted. Attempts to advise on moving the wall by 30cm or so to have it clear the AC unit was met with sarcasm and belittlement. "You aren't paid to fucking think" was one riposte from said facilities manager. Surprisingly no-one appeared to have ever decked him for his attitude.

So....the building contractor fitted the wall over the AC unit, shaping a 20cm deep cut-out into the wall to allow it all to fit. Facilities manager returns with one of the execs after the workspace was fitted out, with the first question from the COO being "What is that mess?" and pointing at the wall cut-out. Facilities manager blamed the contractors and claimed they put the wall in the wrong place....

[Excused Boots]

Re: WiFi dead zones

Hence the oft mentioned CYA contingency. When crass stupidity is involved, which is fairly common to the honest, get instructions in writing (email counts).

[FirstTangoInParis]

Re: WiFi dead zones

> that alternating rows of desks effectively have their own microclimate, ranging between freezing cold and sauna.

Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase 'hot desk' ...

[JimboSmith]

Re: WiFi dead zones

A building I once visited had a toilet off of reception for visitors. I asked if I could use it and discovered a really disturbing thing about it. There was a motion sensor that turned the lights on and off, fair enough you might think. The disturbing thing about it was the placement of the one sensor which was close to the door. It couldn’t see the cubicles just the hand basins, so you had 60 seconds in a cubicle before the lights went off.

If you didn’t know this it was fairly freaky because there’s no way you would be finished in 60 seconds. There was a very faint green glow from the emergency light but that was over the hand basin and quite dim. The cubicles were also almost floor to ceiling and blocked out this small amount of light. So that wasn’t much help and I got caught with the lights going off very unexpectedly. That was a shock and when I eventually managed to finish up and get the lights back on. I went back out to reception and asked the receptionist what the hell that was about. Apparently the contractor they’d hired had missed a sensor from the plans and as a result it was total chaos. They were waiting for these bozos to come back and fix the problem.

[Ken Shabby]

Re: WiFi dead zones

On my first trip to work in Japan, I was amazed by the “Electronic Dick Detectors” in the urinals. They detected your dick, and then when it was not there anymore, the urinal automatically flushed

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: WiFi dead zones

I know the Japanese are high-tech experts, but what about those of us who don't have an electronic dick?

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: WiFi dead zones

You'll get a QR code, and for compatibility reasons with older devices, a bar code.

[FIA]

Re: WiFi dead zones

....and you're just thankful that those embossing machines like they used at the supermarkets for credit cards have been retired long ago.

[Roland6]

Re: WiFi dead zones

>"except that whilst our lights are on motion sensors, those are now commonly in entirely the wrong place as the areas where people sit and walk have changed completely from the original. The sight of people ending up sitting in the dark,"

Seen this a lot in toilets, the motion sensor is just inside the entrance door, so lights get turned on as you enter. However, there are no motion sensors covering the cubicles and the lights are on a short timer (I've had them go out whilst at the urinal) , so the lights time out leaving you to complete your ablutions in the dark and then stumble around trying to exit before you enter the motion sensor's coverage area.

[lglethal]

Re: WiFi dead zones

Are you certain your not part of some unethical psychology experiment?

Changing walls and paths, uncontrollable lighting, bouts of alternating heat and cold. Sounds like someone is conducting a psych experiment on the tolerance of homo sapiens to ridiculous situations. The next step up on those rats in a maze simulations. But at least the rat gets a treat immediately. the human has to wait until the end of the month to get their "treat".

[Anonymous Custard]

Re: WiFi dead zones

Typically just after 5pm around here -------------------->

[Mishak]

which goes round that problem

Maybe sometimes, but not in our new place where a room was added without any though being given to the lighting - the sensor for the room is outside, so you only have a limited time to do anything before you have to go out to get the lights back on, though "passing traffic" often extends the periods.

[Northern Lad]

Ladders - You'd be surprised.

Turns out that in a work capacity in the UK to use ladders you need a) Training to use ladders, b), insurance (if going over two meters high I believe), c) ladders to be inspecting every two years.

And its surprising how many freelance IT bods have this - That said I have never ever seen a job/role for a ladder inspector/certifier but it has to be a thing.

A few years back I was involved in sorting an IT bod to get in a cherry picker, go up nearly 40 foot and unbolt and replace a WiFi access point, oh and it had be be in the middle of the night so not to affect production. You would not believe how many people were involved in organising that one.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Ladders - You'd be surprised.

And they were all there, with cameras to catch the moment?

[ColinPa]

We might have solved out connectivity problem by opening the door

We have a smart electricity meter which is meant to provide half hourly readings. Our electricity company said it was unable to see the meter ( so they sent a man round every month to read the meter) . We switched companies, and they could occasionally see the meter.

The meter is in a room with steel walls, in a building with steel walls, and so we believe the aerial's signal cannot get outside of the building.

We are guessing that when the new company took over the contract, the signal managed to escape once, when some of us where in the switch room, with the door open scratching our heads. We are planning on drilling a big hole in the walls, so we can hang the aerial outside.

Having the aerial inside a metal box sounds a rookie's mistake, or perhaps it was a jobsworth. "The spec says install the meter, it doesn't say check it works."

[GlenP]

Re: We might have solved out connectivity problem by opening the door

When I had my Smart Meter installed (no choice as it was the only way to change tariffs or provider) the engineer was here an hour or so after he'd completed the installation while he made sure the meter was talking to the supplier and to the in-house display - the latter, which is of no actual benefit, took most of that time!

[Giles C]

Re: We might have solved out connectivity problem by opening the door

What does the display actually do. You look at it and it says you are using xxx of gas. But it is freezing outside which is why you have the heating on.

Or you see you are using a lot of electricity well you have the oven on for cooking dinner.

For some people they might be useful, mine has been sitting in a cupboard since the meter was installed….

[PCScreenOnly]

Re: We might have solved out connectivity problem by opening the door

But but but the adverts tell us that by having these smart meters we will save energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: We might have solved out connectivity problem by opening the door

But but but the adverts tell us that by having these smart meters we will save energy

saving energy by constantly being anxious about using energy.

Worse for the elderly or those on low incomes & less means to pay for the usage.

This nation uses less electricity over all than we did in the 1980's yet we pay exorbitantly for that reduced usage.

Most things have fixed costs link facilities, raw materials etc, when customer usage is less the per unit costs customers pay needs to rise to cover that.

Same principle applies in all utilities, with Water when we use less water the unit costs needs to rise to pay the fixed costs, same applies to gas, petrol/diesel etc.

using less will always result in the unit costs going up.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: We might have solved out connectivity problem by opening the door

.....using less will always result in the unit costs going up.

Exponentially so when it comes to cloud costing.

[AJ MacLeod]

Re: We might have solved out connectivity problem by opening the door

The real reason the cost has gone up is renewables. The amount of electricity we consume has dropped massively but because renewables make up such a huge proportion of the generating infrastructure and aren't always available we need vastly more total generating capacity. Oh, and the developers of these renewables projects get paid guaranteed rates regardless of the actual demand for electricity which means we're locked into these ridiculous prices for decades to come.

[DoctorPaul]

Re: We might have solved out connectivity problem by opening the door

A bit of an edge case, but...

I had a smart meter installed as part of an electrical upgrade for an extension that had electric underfloor heating, mainly because it was becoming obvious that one would be needed in order to access the cheapest tariffs.

Due to bereavement the extension remained essentially unused and I could have sworn that I had switched off the heating, but one morning I came downstairs to see the smart display right in the red when nothing major was meant to be on. The unused underfloor heating had turned itself on. I must have not actually thrown the switch but only turned it off in the app and something somewhere had glitched. Thing is, without the display that power could have been drawn for days or even weeks and cost me a fortune.

On the subject of smart meters, I get the "if I install one, they can turn off my power when they like" argument, but it seems to me that the alternative might involve baliffs and the loss of a front door so it's a risk I'm willing to take in order to keep my energy bills sane.

[The Organ Grinder's Monkey]

Re: We might have solved out connectivity problem by opening the door

My understanding was that the remote disconnect function in smart meters was primarily for demand management / load shedding if/when demand exceeds supply, & that punishing non-payees is just a useful secondary purpose. Possibly I am a sweet summer child, though.

[David Hicklin]

Re: We might have solved out connectivity problem by opening the door

> remote disconnect function in smart meters was primarily for demand management / load shedding

I think the "wet dream" is to have an off switch for Smart^TM appliances like fridges, freezers, water tank heaters and the like sheddable should there ever be a shortage of generation capacity.

Oh and it might be a conspiracy theory but spot pricing could also be done when everyone is switched over and not just for the "free" period offers that come and go...

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: We might have solved out connectivity problem by opening the door

> I think the "wet dream" is to have an off switch for Smart™ appliances

Yeah, that was when electricity was very cheap at night, 20+ years ago. That worked without Smart™ too, since the times were fixed a simple clock did the job (40+ years ago too).

Nowadays , where the wet dream got reality, it is to automatically charge your batteries with solar so you don't have to spend money on electricity at night. You don't control the machines, at least to that much. You control the battery charge/discharge depending on what the smartmeter says to be at near zero from/to the grid as much as possible.

You can still do smart control of your devices if you want, 'cause using the solar energy directly is more efficient than storing it first. Run laundry, dishwasher and so on, though a timer is still enough like "you start at 10:00, and you start at 13:00" with a Shelly Switch... For the rest it does not make that much a difference. If you have a classical boiler, like I do, you dump the surplus solar energy there after the batteries are full. If it is a heat pump boiler it does not matter any more when it runs due to efficiency. "But did I mention it warms the water at glacial speed?" No, I am not Technology Connections.

[Anonymous Custard]

Re: We might have solved out connectivity problem by opening the door

Ours was always useful to know when the laundry had finished or the kettle had finished boiling, due to the drop in power consumption.

[JimboSmith]

Re: We might have solved out connectivity problem by opening the door

There was a call I got from the company that bills me for my energy trying to get me to have a smart meter. They mentioned that on the weekend they offered various freebie’s when power generation was at a peak via wind, solar etc. I said that’s of no interest to me and he said it was perfect as you can run those power intensive things then and save money. I said so I’m supposed to do this whilst at work and he questioned whether I worked at weekends and I said yes. I pointed out that I had an Economy 7 tariff and and did all my washing etc. when the cheap rate kicked in at night.

He then tried tell me of the in home display and how I could see which appliance was costing me the most to use. i told him I knew which appliances I had that used the most power the washing machine, the dishwasher, the dryer, the cooker basically the High Wattage ones, and I used them (as I had said before) when the electricity was cheapest, i.e. overnight. He was at a bit of a loss at that point and I told him I was hanging up. They haven’t called back.

[david 12]

Re: We might have solved out connectivity problem by opening the door

In Aus, the companies mandated new meters, the government mandated remote billing, the charities and lobby groups mandated remote display -- because if the companies could do remote-time-of-day charging, the consumer should be able to see what was being billed, and we all paid for full-price full-feature meters.

Then the company that serves me decided that the remote display they'd chosen wasn't secure, never provided the remote display passwords, realized that nobody cared anyway, and never provided the service.

[Terry 6]

Re: We might have solved out connectivity problem by opening the door

That's (part of) what pisses me off about those TV ads. The ones with a vague Albert Einstein parody making wild promises about energy saving. Does it f*k.

All it does is tell us we're using the stuff. We know we're using the stuff. We don't somehow imagine that it isn't being used when we're making dinner- and need to be told. And the people most in energy poverty are even more acutely aware of this fact.

The meters don't tell us room by room where we're wasting electricity- which might be mildly useful, for some people from time to time. Anything else is sheer bollocks. Anyone who can and wants to cut down on what they use will do so without the stupid display.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: We might have solved out connectivity problem by opening the door

When mine was installed he pretty much handed my the IHD and said "plug it in, leave it half an hour and it'll connect"

Two weeks later it hadn't connected so I finally got around to unplugging it, permanently.

I swear the only use for the IHD is to use a little bit of electricity.

[RMclan]

Re: We might have solved out connectivity problem by opening the door

I had smart gas, electric and water meters fitted in my flat last year. I'm in a 1970's build tower block made from 25cm thick pre-stressed concrete panels with multiple grids of rebar built into them. The engineer installing the gas and electric meters told me I was lucky I was on the one side of the building because meters in the flats on the other side had trouble connecting to the network. Apparently the nearest mobile network tower they connect to is to the East (my side) of the building and flats on the West side have too many of the concrete walls between them and the tower. Even being on the 'right' side of the building it took 3 visits for engineers to get the gas and electric meters to connect. I don't think it helps that the electric meter (which is the one that actually talks to the network) sits in a small metal cabinet fixed to one of the concrete walls near the centre of the building.

[Roland6]

Re: We might have solved out connectivity problem by opening the door

>"Having the aerial inside a metal box sounds a rookie's mistake"

Often repeated...

I had an business Internet provider selling me Juniper routers(*) with a USB 4G modem sticks. The idea being you attached the modem to the router and the router would use it as a remoting and backup path if the fibre went down. I pointed out these would be of zero utility as the routers would be installed in a rack cabinet (metal shield) within a room in a metal clad building in a mobile not spot; although if the antenna could be installed TV ariel like on a 3 metre pole on the roof it would have reliable reception; the response I got from their technical people was that the modem was supplied with a 50cm USB extension cable...

(*) pronounced in whatever way makes you happy - See comments on Techie fixed Wi-Fi dead zone with a drill

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: We might have solved out connectivity problem by opening the door

This is what I love about the Shelly 3 EM Pro. It has a wired LAN connection too. In the end WiFi works perfectly, but I needed the pro version anyway since the 120A measurement clamps have longer cables attached than the 50A non-pro version. The LAN port is configured of course to quickly switch over if the AP/rowter(or rawter?) dies.

[Pascal Monett]

Wifi

Seems to me that such problems would be easily solved with a good old Ethernet cable.

But hey, what do I know . . .

[Anonymous Custard]

Re: Wifi

In some annoying manglement cases, by application around the throat...

[theOtherJT]

Re: Wifi

Nearly 15 years ago now I was part of the IT team for a company that had just moved into a shiny new building, custom built for them. It was actually a lovely space but like all such things was running behind schedule and by the time we all moved in a few things weren't quite complete. For example: All the network wiring. It just terminated in big bundles in the patch rooms on each floor rather than in the actual racks with the panels in. We had also brought all our switches with us from the old - much smaller - building and had realized that we didn't actually have enough ports on the edge switches to cover every office.

No matter, says the big boss. You IT lot can wire in the cables for the access points while you're going around and putting them up, we just won't bother wiring up all the offices. It's the 21st century after all, we don't need wired connections to everyone's desk, they'll all be using wifi!

We pointed out that in an office with upward of 1500 people in it, the wifi would almost certainly be completely overwhelmed the first day everyone actually shows up for work but got roundly ignored.

...the first day everyone showed up for work the wifi got totally overwhelmed and everyone started complaining.

Queue rush order for a dozen or so new edge switches followed by three weeks of utterly abysmal connection quality while we waited for a slot with the contractors doing the cabling to come back in and actually finish terminating all the damn cables.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Wifi

Classic.

[Inventor of the Marmite Laser]

Re: Wifi

What's wrong with RS232?

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: Wifi

So many ways of answering that question.

[Someone Else]

Re: Wifi

Nothing that RS-485 wouldn't cure...

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Wifi

But only for 255 people in each segment...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes...

...wifi problems with dumb solutions...had my fair share of those...my two favourites were a customer that took the external antennas off because "they were ugly" and another customer who relocated their nearest hotspot to the other end of the building because they didn't like the green LEDs.

My absolute favourite though was over a decade ago now...I was working on a project to cable and network a large art based organisation in London who shall remain nameless...there was a requirement for the wifi to "blend in" with the pure white gallery space...but at the time, we didn't have the now slick and subtle Unifi "dish" like devices that would have worked a treat...all the high performance kit at the time was either black or "Cisco Duckshit Green"...it was difficult to find kit that was both white and could cover large areas...the only brand at the time that did fairly decent "white" kit was Buffalo, but it was quite expensive and the power supplies had a habit of failing.

Anyway, we took a bunch of APs and we gently spray painted the cases the same shade of white that the rest of the gallery was...they mostly blended in, but the gallery owner (a well known all round complete prick) hated them...he (or indeed she for the sake of anonymity here) insisted that we found a way to completely hide them...we suggested behind the walls (they had a fairly thin plasterboard outer layer with a cavity behind, so we could put them behind the walls, but it required cutting the walls open)...he/she did not want us disturbing the perfectly white gallery walls...so they suggested "why not inside the lift shafts?"...the lift shafts, whilst strategically placed and technically positioned in a way that allowed us to get decent coverage, were surrounded by really thick steel that wifi could barely penetrate if you were stood right next to the shafts...we pointed this out, we explained the physics, we left no fact untransmitted...yet they persisted...they insisted that we do it...so we did...16 wireless access points all inside thick steel and concrete lift shafts...naturally the wifi signal was shit, everywhere...the only way you could get a usable signal was to be inside the lift travelling up or down the shaft. Ultimately, they were livid and told us to fix it, and they conceded that the WAPs needed to in the gallery on the walls and they would just have to deal with complaints (there were none by the way, ever)...because we'd faffed around with the original WAPs and moved them around, dragged them up shafts etc...they were pretty tatty by this point, so we had to order new ones...I made sure to order the most garish and ugly blue/grey Linksys WAPs I could get my hands on.

There are many tales from the art establishment I could tell...some involving contract cleaners and solid bronze castings of bin bags...some involving builders with plasterboard chainsaws and fibre optic trunks...but I won't go into those today. Those are for another day traveller.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ah yes...

Funny, when I had to put WiFi into a plain white arty place I wall mounted the WAP and then put a hardboard facade over it and had their decorator paint that in the same shade of white. Doesn't stand out and if anyone does look at it, it's just another piece of anonymous infrastructure much like the HVAC vents and the building steelwork.

Elsewhere, I've painted many external WAPs to blend in (black, terracotta, grey, mottled, ...) - clients definitely appreciate the effort as nobody wants to look at networking gear.

[KarMann]

Re: Ah yes...

…nobody wants to look at networking gear.

I'm sorry, I beg to differ.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ah yes...

Indeed. Mount a small plaque by it, indicating the title of the work and who the artist was, and no one will give it a second glance. Except us engineers, who are ignoring the art...

[that one in the corner]

Re: Ah yes...

Not even any need to mount it properly, just gaffer tape it to the wall. If it is good enough for bananas...

[Francis Boyle]

Re: Ah yes...

Reminds me of visiting an art gallery many years ago and being fascinated by the paper tape humidity recording devices they use in those days. I was careful to look at them sideways lest some smartarse came along and loudly announce that they weren't actually art pieces.

Irony is that at this very moment I actually have a sculpture sitting on a shelf made out of an old instrument case. (Lots of lovely patinad brass!)

[cosmodrome]

Re: Ah yes...

Hydrographs. They were very common in all kinds of engineering as well. An indeed strangely fascinating to watch.

[PB90210]

Re: Ah yes...

I was in the Barbican art gallery, years ago, and heard a posh 'expert' saying "you can immediately see what he was trying to say". They were in front of a canvas covered in scraps of brightly coloured tissue paper. I thought 'I blow my nose in you general direction' [in a french accent]

(t'was 'The Snail' by Matisse)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ah yes...

Phwoar...look at the SFPs on that. Filthy...dirty switch.

So you are a firm believer that some comms racks bring all the boys the yard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ah yes...

That's a quick way to void your warranty...the WAPs I was installing weren't cheap WAPs and the galleries would change colour regularly. Sometimes for only 48 hours while some kind of event was on. This was not some bog standard art gallery.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ah yes...

A C-Suite denizen demanded he needed “WIFI” in his new office and his PA duly put in the request. The reason was he needed to work from the sofa sometimes and couldn’t do that with a cable. His office was in a corner of the building but it was like the turret on a corner of a castle and stood proud from the rest of the building. The normal office wifi didn’t reach in there because of the building construction, therefore he had several network cables at his desk feeding a printer, a docking station for his laptop, one for the phone etc. We could have used less by daisy chaining one out of the phone but he had a habit of picking up the phone and walking around his old office.

The person assigned to fix this looked at the options very carefully given the seniority of this bloke. He did a survey and found out there was a wall port behind the beautiful chrome gold and gloss black filing cabinet this bloke had. So he picked the largest WAP he could find, a 30cm x 30cm x 10cm off white jobbie, can’t remember the brand and plonked it on top of that with the cables going down the back. We were told he was apoplectic when he came in and saw it. He called the head of IT and demanded that another solution be found ASAP. Head of IT says that’s our standard WAP you want a different one give me a budget code and we’ll order one. He was less keen on that and hid it with a lamp with a large oblong base. The lamp cost more that the cheapest (smaller) WAP we could have got him.

[Pope Popely]

Passive stuff

A clean slot in metal can help; also just putting a Antenna inside connected to a outside antenna can bridge obstacles.

[Anonymous Coward]

Similar random issue

Many many years ago my company supported a large offshore supply company with a large onshore head office.

We had cabled the entire office with good old 50Ohm coax Ethernet with telegartner wall boxes and plug in drop leads, several repeaters, hubs etc everything installed to just withing specs and all functioning correctly when tested.

It worked seamlessly for several months then intermittently one building was dropping out then reconnecting again.

Armed with cable testers I set off, and after several days of troubleshooting, every link tested passing with no issues, I happened to be in an office when the network went down just after someone opened the top drawer of a filing cabinet. AS I was notified of it going down I closed the cabinet and things started working.

This office had recently been reorganized, and stuff moved around, and after investigating we found that one of the wall cables had been knocked from its conduit and was under the corner of the cabinet at the back..

Replaced that cable and refitted into the conduit.

So it would appear that the cabinet base edge were cutting through the cable, and through some remarkable feat of physics was exactly the right conductivity that the network worked and the cable run passed testing, but open the full top drawer it unbalanced the cabinet enough to break whatever connection it had made through the cable and caused the whole network beyond that segment to fail.

[GlenP]

Re: Similar random issue

Many years ago my then employer had a 10Base2 network across one large building and one smaller one, mainly used for terminal emulators to connect to the AS/400. For those who don't know, segments were limited to 185m and you could only have 5 of them, with only 3 having active devices. To get coverage we had two active segments in the main building, then a link segment to the smaller building which had the third active segment. The smaller building was an associated company who also had their own file server and separate network which was outside my control, the PCs on that didn't have access to the AS/400 (IIRC they were mainly CAD).

They suddenly started complaining about network problems, and how "we'd" broken their system. After investigating we found that without asking they'd plugged their server into the main network as well as their "private" one, and enabled switching between them, thus adding an extra segment. As I didn't have admin access to their server I simply unplugged it and told them they couldn't connect it up again unless everything was wired to the same single segment.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Similar random issue

Reminds me of my first car. I had swapped the radio for a radio/cassette player. Long story short, only worked when the ashtray was pulled out!

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: Similar random issue

Back in those days, the ashtray was usually permanently out.

Lifelong non smoker, due to seeing my dad lose half a lung to it by the time I was 9.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Similar random issue

When my parents were in college, my mom's car's radio failed. My dad pulled it out of the dash and left it on the table, to troubleshoot later. They rapidly discovered that nothing electrical in the car worked right without the radio - turning on the windshield wipers made the dash gauges go up and down, turning on the headlights lit the overhead light, etc.

Turns out, all the grounding in the entire car was done through the radio. Bizarre design.

Many years later, when my brother and I were driving the car, we bolted an aftermarket radio to the bottom of the dash and connected the speakers to it. Carefully leaving the original radio installed...

[The Organ Grinder's Monkey]

Re: Similar random issue

Was it an Italian car by any chance? They had some very odd ideas about vehicle electrics in the 70s.

[jake]

Re: Similar random issue

And the British? I hate to invoke the Prince of Darkness, but are you old enough to remember Lucas Industries?

At least all y'all stopped making +ve ground systems in the late '60s ...

_{We won't discuss planned obsolescence by galvanic corrosion ...}

[AlanSh]

The story makes no sense

So Eddie had a problem in the corridor. No mention of the issues around the desk. He then fixed the desktop wifi issues but the the corridor is still haunting him.

Another find Register story (not). The comment stories are much more interesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The story makes no sense

Techie person not a great story teller. More at 11.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The story makes no sense

True that. It made more sense in my original submission:

I recently moved the office access point from its temporary placement, to its permanent home. I received a call shortly after that our Facility Admin was having major connectivity issues. The new placement of the AP shouldn't have changed the signal in any significant manner, so I grabbed my laptop for a bit of troubleshooting.

I pulled out my laptop and placed it on the desk in question. My signal went from strong and steady to weak and intermittent. After beating my head on the issue for an unreasonably long time, I decided to take a break and troubleshoot another issue that the user was having. It seems that their monitors would cut out randomly, more so if someone closed the office door too quickly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Eddy currents.

Years back, when CRT monitors were still a big thing, I was asked to help with a problem in one of my then boss' "other" business interests, a suite of offices he was renting out to various people.

The tenant on the ground floor was bitching that the displays on his teams CRT monitors was bouncing all over the place.

So muggins here arrived with zero background as to what the setup was.

Yup, screens were definitely wobbling. Especially bad were those on desks more or less in a line across the room.

I had a small oscilloscope in my boot and some random stuff, including an old 12v relay.

Cracked off the relay case, extracted the coil and removed the iron core, leaving a nice little search coil. Hang that on the scope and it made a handy little search tool.

A bit of dutiful waving around, with some attention to coil alignment and some quick and dirty notes, produced a "map" that tracked the source of the disturbance to a line across the office (which we were pretty aware of) and about 2-3 feet below the office floor (which we weren't at all aware of. It all tracked back to a power cupboard on the ground floor.

I couldn't see anything untoward in the cupboard (and I was buggered if I was going to touch anything in there anyway) but it did give my old guvnor enough ammo to require the attendance of the electric company at their earliest convenience (as in get your arses here NOW) and cure their earth leakage fault.

'Leccy board duly arrived and, I was later told, uncovered and fixed a nasty earth fault, leaving the young me chuffed at my improvisation and finding a smoking gun.

[Excused Boots]

Re: Eddy currents.

I know I have recounted this story before so apologies to those who recognise it but it does fit into the topic.

Many, many, years, mumble, mumble decades ago a client of mine had moved into a new building, almost a complete new build and remarkably the architects and cable installers were more than willing to work with us, put points where we said they were needed etc. Installed (as I recall) about 30-40 access points, (there was a lot of metal around as part of the building was a storage warehouse). Client moves in and everything works perfectly.

Fast forward six months, every two weeks they had board/management meetings, and they started to complain about the wifi 'failing' during these meetings which always started at 1pm. Various people went down to check the setup and it always was seen to be fine. Eventually I get dispatched to sort it out 'once and for all; or else'. So I pitch up and discover (because I actually bothered to ask various people) that this is not actually a site-wide issue but limited only to the managers in the meeting, Very odd as the AP in the meeting room was performing perfectly. So I wait, just outside the meeting room monitoring the wifi connectivity and at about 1:10pm it falls off a cliff! The AP itself is fine just an enormous amount of interference.

So I have a hunt around; unbeknown to us a room directly below the meeting room had been converted into a kitchen / breakout area, with, and I kid you not, 12 microwave ovens in a line!

Care to guess when the company lunch break happened?

My report to them was along the lines of 'right guys I think I've found your problem, but no I can't change the laws of physics'.

[Luiz Abdala]

My fridge would cut all signals to my monitors for 10 seconds.

I bought a very very very cheap frigobar-sized fridge in my destitute days. The size you expect on a 2-star hotel. I kept it even after getting married just for "entertainment beverages" if you catch my drift. The furniture looks itself is passable, so it doesn't look off-putting. Still works, still makes ice.

It lacks a fundamental protection circuit called RC snubber. If you don't have a degree in Electrical engineering, I will summarize as this: every time a compressor turns on or off, it sends a massive EM spike back on the mains, if you lack it. Specially the unshielded cheap ones in small fridges.

Well, it was never installed on the same circuit occupied by my PC... which then made me research all this. I would lose monitor signal for a solid 10 seconds, the spike infinitely amplified by sharing the same copper wires on both.

I removed the fridge, put it under another breaker, and the problem was gone. Took a while to figure it out.

[Kuang]

You have earned our displeasure. You will be irradiated.

A site I worked on had an ongoing issue with intermittent Wi-Fi that had caused frustration for a couple of years before I arrived, leading to lots of bad feeling towards the IT team. Some of the rooms had trolleys of laptops that would be wheeled out when needed to preserve the working space on the desks. Users would report that all of the laptops would suddenly drop off the network and take a few minutes to reconnect, which was significant as they were generally used for online research and downloading resources during limited time slots.

This happened every day in a number of rooms spread across the site. Most of them had different makes of laptop so it wasn't a problem with a particular hardware iteration. The IT team had already surveyed the AP locations and coverage, switched some out for different types, bounced the channels around etc. No dice. They'd even dropped back from G to A/B in a few critical locations, digging up some old cards to at least give some service.

This felt like an environmental issue to me so I started to walk the grounds, looking for anything structural that might cause it. We had a few hefty transformers nearby and a local substation but that's nothing out of the ordinary. I found a few aerials from an old paging system tucked away in cupboards and roof spaces but verified that those were long dead. The fire alarm system used a custom radio band that wouldn't trouble 2.4GHz signals.

I put pressure on the finance head to let us hire a spectrum analyser for a couple of days, and he eventually relented after I showed him just a few week's worth of emails to demonstrate the productivity losses. When it arrived I teamed up with a colleague and we paced around the place looking for shenanigans. We found them. Every now and then the entire wireless G spectrum would be blasted with noise lasting for up to 30 seconds at a time. Nothing was getting through that.

The problem was that we couldn't find a source. It seemed to be coming from everywhere at once, and the directional antenna didn't help. It was getting a bit 'so near, yet so far'.

We sat in the office in a gloom trying to brainstorm this, with my colleague idly spinning the little flag antenna on its stick. I glanced over at the screen and noticed that the signal was pulsing in time with the spins. I told him to stop spinning it and slowly rotate the flag until the signal peaked. The noise seemed to be coming from the corner of the room, but then vanished instantly. I stood up to walk over and have a closer look, and it came back at full chat.

In the corner of the room there was a PIR sensor for the intruder alarm. I stared at it and stood still until the noise disappeared from the display out of the corner of my eye, then waved a hand. The red light came on, and boom. Noise central.

We found an old matching PIR in the store room and pulled it apart to reveal a Wi-Fi controller chip and a loop antenna underneath the infrared sensor. The system didn't have any wireless capability back to the base, and it wasn't advertised as a feature. Every time somebody moved in any of the affected rooms the burglar alarm had been blasting everyone in sight off the network. I can only assume that the wireless bits were used for microwave detection, but I'm not convinced this was a full implementation as there'd be no sense in drowning out the most popular Wi-Fi spectrum at the time.

We spoke to the alarm installers - a very large German company who specialised in the stuff - who denied that their equipment was capable of this, even after we sent them gutshots and the chip datasheet. Nothing else in their catalogue advertised microwave either. This was feeling like they'd badge engineered someone else's board without properly plugging up the holes. We got their rep in and demonstrated this happening beyond reasonable doubt, and left them mulling over the cost to replace a few thousand PIRs.

I left shortly after this so I don't know how it was resolved, but I do remember one bit of fun we had beforehand.

One particular staff member was a dick to us about this issue (and everything else he could think of) on a daily basis despite our best efforts. When we were doing our detection walk we noticed he had a class on with people who seemed to be a little distractible, so we decided to enter the room and ask if he minded us doing a very quick test of the environment. He grumped but couldn't really argue as it was his pet issue. We confirmed out loud that yes, we detected positive readings of a high strength and they indicated a serious problem.

As we left, our nemesis asked what we were testing for.

Radiation, we said, and left him to it. We could hear the racket all the way down the corridor. Technically true. I don't feel bad about it.

[Giles C]

Re: You have earned our displeasure. You will be irradiated.

I’ve seen that problem with old Pir sensors before, we had a wireless survey done (this is about 15 years ago) and found the same issue, we told the people responsible their attitude is nobody needs wireless so we aren’t going to anything. Now we are finding that most of our kit is wireless and in offices cabling is the minority case.

[ben kendim]

Yagi indoors? Fox hunting in the near field?

When trying to map the WiFi signals in that corridor, you may want to reconsider using a Yagi.

With a few element Yagi the beam shape will be broad. With many elements the beam shape IN THE FAR FIELD will be tight, but near field gain maps will be very complex. Thus indoor fox hunting becomes a pretty complex endeavor.

Based on the dimensions of that hallway, and the reflectivites of the walls and ceiling you may want to consider just walking through and scanning the place with an omni directional antenna.

[Daedalus]

Getting sneaky

Given that most owners of home WiFi systems don't or can't secure the admin account, it should be easy for our intrepid correspondent to grab the necessary passwords and clean up any overlaps. Putting all the client routers on 2.4 GHz and reserving 5 GHz for the "official" network used by the staff would be a start.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Getting sneaky

OP here, I dearly wish I could do this. Unfortunately the ISP doesn't let you log in directly to the routers anymore. You have to log in to your account and use their app. I counted 40 separate wifi connections (both 2.4 and 5) I could see in our conference room. I finally just installed an AP under the conference table and dialed it down so it only covers that room. Now the worst signal in the building is my office...

[JMcKeand]

Not WiFi but odd resolution

Back in the early days of my career I got a story from the Senior SE on our team. He had gone with a sells rep to visit a prospective client, they were having intermittent issues with their network. They had put together an ad hock thinnet network using ArcNet (IYKYK). It was a glorified peer to peer setup using a mix of Windows 95 and Windows for Workgroups. (Yes, I’m old) The thinnet came together in a Gorgon’s knot behind the “server”, i.e. that tall pc case with the extra space for “big” hard drives. When my Senior arrived they were experiencing the problem. After looking around he grabbed the knot of cables and gave it a shake, the network came back alive. Soon after this trip, we deployed the original Microsoft Small Business Server (you know the NT4 one, on a real server) with new PCs all around and new Ethernet switches and cabling.

Currently at my house my relatively new LG microwave knocks out the 2.4 GHz wireless on my UniFi AP. Not a problem for my phone (5 GHz), but my Roku is a little old and Netflix doesn’t like to loose internet connection when my wife is preparing dinner.

I know I just need to run the survey while nuking something, but at the end of the day I don’t want to deal with tech issues in the evening after dealing with them all day. And weekend time is too precious to spend it on “work “.

[Hazmoid]

wifi routers breaking network

Back in the far past I worked for a tug boat venture that towed barges up and down the Westerna Australian coast. One day I got a call from one of the barges that their internal network was not working properly. I tried remoting in and looking at it ( this was using 3G services when they were close enough to the coast to pick up cellular tower signals, or using hideously expensive satellite services) but could not find the problem. When they got to port I went aboard and did a scan of the network and found that there was a rogue DHCP server.

Went down to the engine room and found that someone had brought their home ADSL wifi modem and plugged it into the ethernet connection. Needless to say it was unplugged and this resolved the issue.

When I talked to the engineers, I found that the previous shift had installed it. I organised an AP for them and gave the modem to the captain with the advice that people were not to connect anything to the network without authorisation.

[Octal]

Each wall, was plasterboard(drywall) which had a sheet of steel attached to it

Worked at a school on contract(, I’ll omit the town), which was a 1970’s build, which included a very special fire safety feature : the back of every sheet of plasterboard(drywall) had a sheet of steel, so you could use magnetic tape and stick things to the wall.

It went from 14 Samsung Wireless Access Points, to a whole school system, I never did find out if the contractor installing the system, had understood about the plasterboard(drywall) in the main building. as my contract ended (due to a change in staffing), but I suspect a few more Wireless Access Points would be needed, perhaps one per room…..

Classrooms already had pen-boards, backed in steel too, with projectors, so that probably didn’t help the new WiFi coverage.