how can christmas lights interfere with WIFI?

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I was reading somewhere that Christmas fairy lights can interfere with WIFi. The same can be said about microwaves etc.

Can someone offer my the simplest explanation is to the how/why?

Thanks in advance.

Edit: corrected some grammar

In: Technology

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

WiFi communicates using radio waves within a specific range of frequencies. These waves, like visible light, are disturbances of the electromagnetic field. Christmas lights don’t cause interference with their visible light but instead it is because they are made in an inexpensive way.

When electricity flows through a conductor it creates a magnetic field, and a changing magnetic field can cause electrical currents in conductors. This is how both electric generators and motors work, along with transmitters and receiving antenna.

Inexpensive LED Christmas lights are often made with unshielded wires and include circuitry that rapidly switches current flow to drive the LEDs. This can mean they are producing rapidly changing magnetic fields around them, essentially transmitting electromagnetic noise which your WiFi needs to work through.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Regarding microwaves, microwave radiation happens to be exactly the same frequency as common Wi-Fi frequencies.

It’s effectively Wi-Fi turned up so high, that it melts things. So any microwave that isn’t perfectly shielded is going to be emitting a lot of random Wi-Fi noise and the actual Wi-Fi signal just gets downed out.

It’s still shielded enough to prevent it being harmful (you’d feel it if it wasn’t), but it wrecks havoc on Wi-Fi

Two ways to avoid this is to get a better shielded microwave (not very useful advice, it’s not like they say “well shielded” or “not well shielded” on the box) or use the 5Ghz band of Wi-Fi, which is well outside the microwave’s operating frequency.