Wi-Fi Sickness Sweeps the Nation

Rush Limbaugh.com ^ | May 21, 2015 | Rush Limbaugh

[justlurking]

Forcing a channel change would cure it for a few days.

If changing the channel fixed the problem, you are experiencing interference because someone else is using that channel.

There are only a handful of WiFi channels that don't overlap:

But, if someone is using a router with 802.11n, there is even few non-overlapping channels:

You might want to invest in an 802.11ac router. That will move you into the 5GHz band, where there should be less interference. You can just plug it into one of the ports on your Verizon router.

[TexasGator]

“You might want to invest in an 802.11ac router. “

Thanks. I have a cheap router plugged into my Verizon. Thinking about upgrading but the problem hasn’t come back for the last couple of months so just biding my time.

[justlurking]

I forgot to point out: if you upgrade to an 802.11ac router, your WiFi devices must also support it.

You can have both networks active at the same time, if necessary.

[DHerion]

Is Rush sure she didn’t say ‘Brain Cloud’?

[backwoods-engineer]

Hmm, I’ll have to get out my portable specan and a horn antenna, and see if our microwave oven leaks.

[backwoods-engineer]

Would any of our terrestrial broadcasts of the past 50 odd years be able to penetrate 10 or 20 light years without being lost in background noise? AM, FM, shortwave?

I would say they might be able to receive some of our spread-spectrum transmission that have a feature that permits something "coding gain", but a) they're pretty weak compared to a terrestrial TV transmitter, and b) unless the aliens had prior knowledge of the signal characteristics, they couldn't apply the mathematical operation to pull the signal out from under the noise.

I'll try some more calculations, but probably unless the fictional aliens are very close by (less than a light-day or so), they won't hear us.

[backwoods-engineer]

And even though the ionosphere absorb or reflect VHF much except for times of sporadic E, it would seem that it would mess it up some.

No, it really doesn't absorb HF/UHF transmissions. I've stood out in the parking lot at work with a handheld, 5-Watt VHF/UHF ham radio transceiver, and talked to the ISS space station (and before it, AO-25 and other ham radio satellites) with just a whip antenna. I've done it from my car with a whip antenna, too. That's straight through the ionosphere, and more than 300 miles beyond it. It was like they were in the next town.

Also, most of the space missions since Gemini have used S-band transmission, around 2.5 GHz, to talk to the spacecraft. Ionosphere doesn't attenuate it much at all.

[rabidralph]

I have a second-hand home and the microwave that came with it looks like it was bought in the mid-80s. I’m sure it’s frying my brain a little at a time each time I walk by it. Also, it’s in a built-in cubby hole that is open to the basement stairs. So I get fried twice.

[Flick Lives]

I would say they might be able to receive some of our spread-spectrum transmission that have a feature that permits something “coding gain”, but a) they’re pretty weak compared to a terrestrial TV transmitter, and b) unless the aliens had prior knowledge of the signal characteristics, they couldn’t apply the mathematical operation to pull the signal out from under the noise.

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Interesting. I wonder if conversely, inadvertent alien transmissions may be passing Earth. I know with SETI, we’re looking in some sort of frequency that should be less effected by noise, but maybe that’s the wrong tactic. Maybe we should be looking in the background noise for patterns. Maybe we could infer the broadcast encoding of the alien equivalent of the Little Orphan Anne show. Now that would be wild.

[kvanbrunt2]

can you point to some of the research. just curious not that i’m a tin hat fellow but we have been pumping a lot of radio around especially with cellular.