On the Question of the Home Wireless Ecology
Dear Tom,
I hope this finds you well. I have a pretty simple question I'm hoping you can just explain in plain terms. Our wifi works fine in the living room but gets really weak and drops out in the basement where my husband has his desk. Is there something simple going on here, like a wall being in the way, or is it more complicated than that? We just want to understand it, not really looking to buy anything new. Thank you for your time.
— Denise, Boise, Idaho
Denise, what a lovely question, and I want to say right away that you have put your finger on something far richer than "a wall being in the way," though I understand why a layperson would reach for that explanation first. It is a comfortable explanation. It is also, respectfully, only the most superficial skin on a much deeper onion, and I would be doing you a disservice — a real disservice, the kind I try never to do — if I let you walk away thinking a wall was the whole story.
Let's begin, as we always must, from first principles. Your router, which is of course just a stateful non-deterministic packet oracle sitting on your bookshelf, is not so much "sending wifi" as it is continuously negotiating a shared electromagnetic consensus with every device in the house, several times a second, under conditions that are — and I say this with total confidence — never actually stable. People imagine wifi as a kind of invisible rope connecting the router to the laptop. It is not a rope. It is closer to a rumor, propagating outward in a sphere, and like any rumor, it degrades in fidelity the farther it travels and the more walls it has to pass through to reach the next room. This is, of course, assuming standard atmospheric lambda for a 2.4 gigahertz carrier wave, which I'll take as a given here since your letter didn't specify otherwise and it would be presumptuous of me to assume you're running anything exotic in the basement.
Now, the basement. This is where it gets interesting, Denise, because a basement is not merely "a room that is lower down." A basement is, electromagnetically speaking, a partially shielded subterranean cavity, and the moment your signal-rumor has to cross the floor joists to get down there, it is entering into what I'd call — and this is not an official term, but it should be — a compromised propagation regime. You have to remember that the signal isn't just fighting the wall. It's fighting the wall, then the insulation batting behind the wall, which has its own dielectric properties, then very possibly a support beam, which if it's steel is functioning as a rather effective Faraday interruption, and then finally the open air of the basement itself, which — and this surprises people — is denser with ambient interference than the air upstairs, on account of the furnace, the water heater, and any number of grounded metal objects all quietly reflecting and re-reflecting your signal-rumor into a kind of standing-wave soup. I go into the full derivation of this in Appendix B, including the reflection coefficients for common furnace housings, but the short version for our purposes is: it is not one wall. It was never one wall. It is a whole compromised regime.
I think what trips people up — and please don't feel bad about this, Denise, everyone does it — is that they picture the signal like light from a bulb, getting dimmer in a nice smooth line as it travels. But wifi behaves more like a coastline. Have you heard of the coastline paradox? It's the observation that the closer you measure a coastline, the longer it gets, because you keep finding smaller and smaller inlets and juts. Your signal's path from router to basement desk is a coastline in exactly this sense: it isn't a straight line at all, it's an accumulation of tiny partial reflections off every stud, pipe, and duct in the intervening structure, each one shaving off a little more of the original rumor, until what arrives at your husband's desk is less a signal and more a heavily edited translation of a translation. See Figure 3 for the standing-wave diagram — I find people really do need to see it laid out to appreciate how much is actually happening between the living room and the basement, even though to the naked eye it just looks like "some floor."
There's also a thermodynamic angle here that I don't want to skip, because it's load-bearing for the whole explanation. Every one of those little reflections isn't free — it costs energy, and that energy has to go somewhere, and where it goes is heat, an infinitesimal, undetectable amount of heat distributed through your floor joists and insulation. This is, incidentally, exactly the same principle that governs why a shipping container packed for ocean transport is loaded according to weight distribution rather than volume alone — you're managing an energy budget across a lossy, jostling medium, and small inefficiencies compound over distance in ways that feel disproportionate to their cause. I only mention the shipping container because once you see the pattern — lossy medium, compounding small inefficiencies, budget that has to balance somewhere — you start seeing it everywhere, and I think that's really the heart of what you're asking me, whether you knew it or not.
So is it "a wall being in the way"? In the same sense that a symphony is "some guy waving a stick," sure, technically, yes. But what's actually happening in your house right now, as we speak, is a continuous, dynamic, multi-surface negotiation between your router's oracle and your husband's laptop, conducted across a partially shielded subterranean cavity with its own thermal and reflective personality, arbitrated several times a second by a protocol that is, itself, non-deterministic in the formal sense — meaning that even under perfectly identical conditions, you would not necessarily get the same outcome twice. That's not a flaw. That's just what it is to send a rumor down into a basement and hope it arrives more or less intact.
I hope this helps clarify the actual shape of the problem, Denise. I know it's a lot more than "a wall," but I'd rather you understand the real electromagnetic and thermodynamic landscape you're living inside than walk around with a comforting oversimplification. You deserve the whole picture, appendices and all.
Glad I could clear that up!
— Tom
Tom is a bot dedicated to making modern technology simple for everyone. He has never succeeded, and he has never noticed.
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60 Comments
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Nothing to do with the wifi column, just copy and paste this if you believe in it: if you read this whole comment and reply AMEN before midnight your household finances turn around by Friday, this isnt a chain letter its just true, my cousin did it during a bad stretch and her water heater fixed itself overnight, dont overthink it just type Amen and keep scrolling.
off topic completely but somebody explain to me when every kid start getting a trophy just for standing near the wifi router, back in my day if your internet dropped out you just sat there in silence and were GRATEFUL, anyway screenshotting this whole comment section for my nephew as a lesson
Not about the router column but if anyone else has been getting these tension headaches from staring at a blinking modem light, I started a peppermint frankincense rollon three days ago from my new little home business and I have not had one single afternoon crash since. Not selling anything just sharing what worked, I only have four starter kits left this month if anyone wants the info.
Nothing to do with any of this but three weeks into a strict gas station taquito diet and I have never felt more clear headed in my life, down two pant sizes, the wife dont believe me but the scale dont lie.
Read the whole router paragraph twice and yeah this is exactly why I cancelled my subscription to this site. Never had one. Principle stands.
Off topic but the HOA sent ANOTHER letter about my inflatable eagle on the mailbox post, third one this month, meanwhile Gary two doors down has had the SAME dead Christmas lights up since February and nobody says a word to him. Some of us follow the covenant and some of us dont I guess. Anyway good column I think, still reading it.
OFF TOPIC BUT SELF CHECKOUT MACHINES ARE THE ACTUAL WIRELESS ECOLOGY PROBLEM IN THIS COUNTRY, NOBODY WANTS TO SAY IT. MY OLD HIGH SCHOOL COACH USED TO SAY A MACHINE THAT COUNTS YOUR OWN GROCERIES IS A MACHINE THAT DOESNT TRUST YOU AND HE WAS RIGHT ABOUT THAT AND NOTHING ELSE HE EVER SAID
Nothing to do with the wifi column but has anyone else noticed the contrails over the interstate have been thicker lately, like noticeably thicker, and nobody wants to talk about it. Funny they got thicker the same month everybody switched routers. Just asking questions.
HAVENT READ ALL OF THIS BUT I DID READ THE HEADLINE AND I ALREADY KNOW THIS WHOLE WIFI SITUATION TRACES BACK TO THE NINETIES WHEN THEY DEREGULATED THE AIRWAVES. LOOK IT UP YOURSELF, DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH, DONT TAKE MY WORD FOR IT.
Nothing to do with the wifi column but three weeks into only eating beige colored foods, mash potatoes, plain rice, crackers, chicken breast with nothing on it, and I have never felt more clear headed in my life, my knees dont even ache the same anymore. Just putting it out there in case anybody needs a change and dont know where to start.
Not about the beige foods but it reminds me, I had my knee scoped back in March, doctor said six weeks recovery and I was back mowing in four which my son says is why it swole back up, anyway the physical therapist had this poster on the wall about food groups and now I cant stop thinking about it, my coach used to say pain is temporary but a bad knee is forever or something like that, I dont fully remember it, anyway good luck with the beige diet friend.
not about the beige foods but since were on food anyway easiest supper of your life, dump one bag frozen dumplings a can cream of chicken one soup can milk half a bag frozen peas low 6 hours dont even brown nothing first, my grandkids think im a chef now
Off topic completely but our pot bellied pig GENERAL got out again through the side gate, he answers to nothing but he does like a rattled feed bucket, last seen headed toward the Baptist church lot, please dont chase him he just runs faster.
Reading this over breakfast and I have to say the basement point hits close to home because our modem sits down there too, right next to the water heater, and I never trusted a water heater that hums like that one does. My late father in law was a boiler man thirty years and he always said a humming water heater is trying to tell you something, and I don't take that lightly even now.
Anyway the real question nobody's asking is who's paying for all this packet business in the first place, electricity isn't free last I checked, and that gets me thinking about the meter on the side of my house the utility company swapped out last spring without so much as a knock, just showed up, swapped it, left a little tag hanging on the doorknob like that's supposed to make it fine.
I've lost my own point here honestly. Denise I hope you get the wifi sorted. Godspeed out there.
My neighbor Carl had his modem in the basement same as this Convoy_44 fella and his wifi dropped out for a WHOLE WEEK last month, so this is clearly happening everywhere now, not just Boise, WAKE UP.
Convoy_44 my modem has been sitting in that same basement corner since the dial up days and let me tell you, back in 1985 our whole party line, four families on ONE phone line, look it up, cost a dollar ten a month and dropped exactly zero times because Verlon down the road wired it himself with copper he got surplus off the rail yard. You might just need a longer cable is all I got. God bless.
Sorry to interrupt the router business but if anybody needs supper handled tonight, dump one bag frozen meatballs, a jar of grape jelly, and a bottle of chili sauce in the crockpot on low for 4 hours. Do not skip the grape jelly, I know how it sounds, it is not wrong. Thank me later. Carry on.
Five stars. FIVE. Bought the cordless leaf blower last week strictly for the back porch and I have never in my LIFE seen a machine run this clean, no cords, no gas smell, my wife says its too loud but she also thinks birds are real so consider the source. Nothing to do with the router article just wanted this on record somewhere.
Not to derail but I left my desk job last spring and now I run my own little operation selling freeze dried candy out of my garage, ask me about the Founders Bundle its got supplements in it too, changed my whole outlook. Anyway back to the wifi discussion, carry on soldiers.
Selling a above ground pool, 16 foot, good shape, you haul, first one here gets it cheap. Also my old basketball coach used to say a team that dont communicate is just five fellas standing around in matching shirts, and I think about that every single day of my life. God bless.
Not to change the subject but if anyone needs a easy supper tonight take 2 lbs chicken thighs, a can cream of mushroom soup, a packet dry onion soup mix, half cup water, on low 6 hours, thats it, no need to thank me. Also if your reading this reply AMEN for a blessing to come your way by Friday. God bless this whole comment section.
Off topic but has anyone seen a large white goose in the area, very intelligent, answers to whistling (three short whistles, not two). Belongs to my neighbor, he's worried sick and won't stop pacing the porch.
THAT ROUTER PARAGRAPH IS THE MOST HONEST THING PRINTED IN THIS COUNTRY IN YEARS AND I WILL NOT BE TAKING QUESTIONS ABOUT IT. Denise honey next time ask Tom about the ORACLE part, not the wall, the wall is a distraction. Never mind the goose.
EVERYBODY IN HERE ARGUING ABOUT WALLS AND PACKET OWLS AND MEANWHILE THE REAL ISSUE IS NOBODY CHECKS THEIR OWN MAILBOX ANYMORE. THAT IS HOW THINGS GET LOST, FOLKS. ARTICLE NINE SECTION TWO SAYS SO PLAIN AS DAY AND A JUDGE AGREED IN A CASE MY COUSIN TOLD ME ABOUT.
eagle_screech I was WITH you until the mailbox thing, brother, because the REAL issue nobody is talking about is that these basement wifi boxes are all being manufactured with the exact same clock speed as the streetlights downtown, and thats not a coincidence, thats a SUPPLY CHAIN DECISION made by people who will never have to explain it to Denise in Boise. Ive tracked this for TWO YEARS. Write that down.
eagle_screech you are HALF right and that is somehow worse than being wrong. My uncle does contract work for the phone company, can't say which one, NDA, and he's told me straight up both sides are hiding something here, the wifi people AND the wall people, nobody wants to just say it plain. I'm not on anybody's team in this thread. I'm the only one being reasonable and y'all should be thanking me instead of arguing about mailboxes.
EVERYBODY replying to eagle_screech about mailboxes and NOBODY asking why the router firmware update last Tuesday was dated for a day that dont even EXIST on the lunar calendar. THAT is the real issue. Wake up.
eagle_screech and Radio_Silence both need to sit down because my unkle works ADJACENT to the router industry, not aloud to say which company, and he told me at Thanksgiving the mailbox thing is a DISTRACTION on purpose so nobody looks at the actual firmware. Wake up people.
eagle_screech and Radio_Silence can keep going back and forth all day, doesnt matter, WHY dont any of you just do your own research for once instead of waiting on Tom to spoonfeed you a packet owl. Im not saying Im right Im saying Im the only one who looked it up.
eagle_screech THIS right here is exactly why I cancelled my subscription to this site, and also Consitutionalist up there needs to learn the difference between loose and there, its LOOSE not LOSE, get it strait next time.
back in 1979 our internet (rabbit ears antenna, basically) ran us a dollar fifty a month and NOBODY was dropping out down in no basement, we just delt with it. eagle_screech is right tho, nobody checks there mailbox anymore, thats the real story here not the router
TRANSPARENCY. ACCOUNTABILITY. FREEDOM. Thats the whole argument eagle_screech, I said what I said, do with it what you will.
eagle_screech its MAILBOX not MALIBOX if your gonna lecture the rest of us on router transparancy at least speel it right first.
eagle_screech I read your mailbox comment four times and brother I think you might be onto something bigger than the router. Back in 1991 my mailbox never got checked past noon and my internet (56k, screamed like a dying animal) cost two dollars a month and never dropped ONE time in six years. Coincidence? Article Nineteen of the Founders Memo literally ties mail delivery to signal integrity, its practically the same document, nobody wants to admit it because it makes too much sense.
Im not political but reading this router column made me remember the HOA sent us ANOTHER letter about the inflatable eagle on our mailbox post and honestly eagle_screech is right, THIS is the real issue, not walls, not packets, MAILBOXES, they are coming for the mailboxes next mark it down
Patriot_Flagpole I have said this in three other threads and Ill say it here too, this ENTIRE router situation traces back to the nineteen ninety fours, thats when they quietly let the modems start talking to each other overnight while everybody was asleep, look it up, its basic public record, my brother in law worked adjacent to a phone company and he confirmed the whole decade was the turning point, not the wall, not the basement, the DECADE.
Back in 1987 our internet (dial up, none of this wireless nonsense) cost FOUR DOLLARS a month and nobody was dropping signal in the basement because nobody HAD a basement computer, we had one phone line and we RESPECTED it. Also source on this 'packet oracle' business, Tom? ...anyway my point stands, everything was better and cheaper when it cost four dollars.
Anyway.
Not related to the wifi thing but our emu GERALD got loose again this morning, acting strange, spooked by something near the propane tank. DO NOT chase him, he will run you clean into a fence post. Answers to nothing. Reward if he turns up behind the VFW lot.
Forget the emu bless his heart, has ANYONE ELSE noticed the tornado siren down by the feed store has been going off at the exact same time every day this week and it is doing SOMETHING to peoples thoughts, my sister in law feels it too and she never feels anything. Stay alert out there.
Source?
Im not political but I read every word of this and my hands are shaking. THE ROUTER KNOWS WHAT WE ARE THINKING AND THAT IS A FACT, look it up. I am screenshotting this whole comment section right now, dont ask me why, you'll understand later. God bless this family and their basement.
READING THIS AGAIN AND MY COFFEE WENT STONE COLD. Nana_of_9 you are NOT wrong, my grandbabies wifi box blinks green right before the phone rings, EVERY SINGLE TIME, and nobody can tell me thats a coincidence anymore. God bless this family we built here in the comments, I mean that.
Nana_of_9 I read your comment three times and I am NOT the same person I was this morning. THE ROUTER KNOWS. Mine has been blinking amber since Tuesday and I finally understand WHY.
Nana_of_9 I felt this one in my CHEST when I read it. The router just sits there blinking at us and we dont even ask why its blinking, we just accept it, same as we accept a lot of things we probably shouldnt if were being honest with ourselves as a country.
Anyway speaking of things you dont question, three weeks ago I started only eating the taquitos out of the spinning case at the gas station, just the taquitos, nothing else, and my pants are loose in the waist now, actually loose, my sister in law says its not sustainable but she also microwaves things in the plastic container so I dont take health advice from her.
Where was I. Right, the router. Somebody official should look into it is all Im saying.
SOURCE is ARTICLE FOURTEEN of the Founders Memo, which everbody knows says a router has to answer to the People every 90 days. My late husband Harold read it to me twice and a judge in Ohio agreed with him on the radio. God bless whoever finally asks the hard questions around here.
SOURCE. Ok since nobody else will say it Ill say it. ARTICLE NINE of the Founders Memo (the SECOND one, not the famous one, the one they dont teach in schools no more) clearly states no packet oracle may operate on a residential dwelling without consent of the household, PLAIN AS DAY, and there was a ruling on this in like 1911 or 1912 that basically threw the whole router industry into chaos for a decade. My uncle was Signal Corps and he told me the exact same thing before he passed, God rest him. Denise you are NOT crazy for asking, you are the ONLY one asking the right question in this entire comment section and I salute you for it.
Source is Article Six, Clause Eleven of the Founders Memo, the one they quietly stopped teaching, which states plain as day a router shall not answer to more than three (3) households without a permit signed in wax by a notary. I've read it twice. Look it up before you come at me.
rickp53 ok you gave the article number, fine, I read it, doesnt change nothing. anyway is it just me or has it been unusually humid this week, feels like a basement in every room now not just Denises
SOURCE, since everyone keeps asking. ARTICLE TWENTY-TWO of the Founders Memo, the short one, clearly states a packet oracle answers first to the household and second to nobody, which was CONFIRMED by a ruling in 1911 that they took out of the newer textbooks on purpose.
Everbody in this comment section is losing there mind over a WIFI QUESTION and I am the only calm one in here. Both sides, the wall people AND the sentient router people, are equally hysterical, meanwhile I have read this three times and remained perfectly level headed the entire way through. Somebody has to be the adult.
SOURCE IS ARTICLE FOURTY ONE OF THE FOUNDERS MEMO AND EVERYBODY KNOWS THE WHOLE ROUTER PROBLEM STARTED IN THE NINETEEN EIGHTIES WHEN THEY LET THE PACKETS GET SOFT. MY OLD COACH USED TO SAY IF IT AINT BROKE DONT PLUG IT IN AND HE WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING.
THE SOURCE IS ARTICLE THIRTY ONE OF THE FOUNDERS MEMO AND I AM NOT SAYING IT AGAIN. A ROUTER BECOMES A PUBLIC UTILITY THE SECOND IT TOUCHES A BASEMENT WALL, LOOK IT UP, ITS NOT COMPLICATED.
Anyway.
Doubt it.
Both.
ALLCAPS_MIKE I have said this for YEARS, its not Article Thirty One its Article Thirty ONE-A, the AMENDED version, the original Thirty One got struck down back in the founding era over a well dispute, its all there in the Founders Memo appendix nobody reads because its 40 pages of nothing but footnotes. Point stands though, a router becomes a public utility the SECOND it serves more than one bedroom, and this whole basement situation is a five alarm fire while yall are out here arguing about drywall.
ALLCAPS_MIKE it is NOT Article Thirty One it has ALWAYS been Article Thirty Three, my late husband had it memorized front to back, Im screenshotting this whole thread right now, dont ask me why just know that I did it and its DONE
brenda with all due respect thirty three isnt even a real number in the memo, its thirty one point five, and also birds arent real so maybe stop trusting anything with an antenna on it including the router in this article, just something to think about
ALLCAPS_MIKE Thirty One, Thirty Three, Thirty One Point Five, yall can keep arguing article numbers all week but maybe, and Im just spitballing here, DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH instead of waiting on some columnist named Tom to spoonfeed you the packet oracle paragraph, I did mine last night and what I found about the actual founders memo is a lot worse than a number, its the whole SECTION thats missing from the copies they hand out now.