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Using Aluminum Oxide Paint To Secure Wi-Fi
eldavojohn writes "The BBC reports on people using aluminum oxide in their paint to block Wi-Fi signals from leaving their home or business. Aluminum oxide resonates at the same frequency as Wi-Fi signals and other radio waves, blocking data from going outside a building. It's not a flawless solution, as it may also block AM/FM signals. You or your neighbors may be unwittingly using this already, as most pre-finished wood flooring uses aluminum oxide as a protective coating."
Wouldn't keeping radio signals in also have the unfortunately side effect of keeping radio signals out? While having a neighborhood coffee shop offer free wifi to paying customers while being an of oasis of cellphone-free peace & quiet would be sweet, having no cellphone reception at home because one desperately wants to prevent neighbors from stealing one's wifi seems very inconvenient (especially when setting up even the most basic built-in wireless router security would successfully do the trick in 99.9% of cases).
Just once I'd like someone to call me 'Sir' without adding 'You're making a scene.'
I'm already using aluminum foil lining in many of my hats and clothes to protect me from the government transmissions. However, I hadn't heard that Al2O3 was any better than straight aluminum foil.
It seems suspicious that this story would be posted immediately after I began considering papering my walls with foil.
...a way to stop wearing this itchy tinfoil hat!
Then != than you morons.
Wouldn't you have to paint over the windows?
I dipped my head in this aluminum oxide paint, and it keeps all their signals out. Granted, I look somewhat like a cyborg now, but this stuff should work just fine for an office trying to keep their signals in.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
Note, the material concerned is Aluminium IRON oxide. Big difference. Aluminium oxide is a good dielectric and would be bugger all use for RF shielding. Oh and the article is a wierd too: it talks about 100GHz shielding where WiFi bands are ~ 2.5GHz.
Dunno where they got the crap about "resonates".
The paint might act as an electrostatic shield, or as a lossy dielectric, both effects that will attenuate RF signals.
But resonate, no.
We do know the world would be a better place if everyone shared their wi-fi securely using
a technology like FON, don't we. (No I'm not associated with the company. Just recognize a
great concept when I see one.)
I'm seriously tired of how, particularly in the US, sharing wi-fi gets implanted in peoples'
brains as a criminal, borderline terrorist activity, with terms such as
"theft of tele-communication resources" and similar Orwellian mindf**k terms.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
> What frequencies are not resonant in Aouminum Oxide paint?
The reporter is just yammering. He hasn't the foggiest idea what the word "resonant" means and knows less than nothing about radio. All we can glean from this is that someone has put out a press release about rf absorbant paint, something that has been around for decades.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
You select WPA2-PSK in your router's config, press "generate key", make a note of the generated key, connect your laptop to the encrypted WLAN, enter the key, done. No beacon disabling, radio frequency shielding, MAC filtering, DHCP disabling or other nonsense necessary. It's like people are trying to test every option but the right one.
Using information in the article I was able to find the actual science paper. It turns out they are able to tune the resonate frequency of this paint. Very cool. However, the it doesn't go all the way down to 2.4 GHz. That's a pretty long wavelength for this process.