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New Houses Killing Wi-Fi
Barence writes "Poor Wi-Fi or mobile reception is one of the banes of modern living — and modern building techniques could be making things worse. PC Pro has photos of a new-build being covered from floorboards to rafters in a tin-foil like material. The "highly reflective" material could have unpredictable results for radio signals, potentially bouncing mobile signals away from the house or preventing Wi-Fi signals from reaching the garden. And the new householder is likely to be none the wiser."
Since moving into my new home, I've noticed a significant reduction in secret CIA messages being injected into my brainwaves. Goodbye ugly tinfoil hat!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Insulation isn't usually put on interrior walls and I have no need to broadcast my wifi outside of my house. Those that do can position their WAP near a window.
I'm also certain this is not an a recent issue. Almost all the insulation I've seen, apart from spray insulation, has some kind of foil-like backing.
Maybe complainers should spend 2 minutes trying a different wifi channel instead of blaming their home.
This should boost the low end Tech jobs. Lots of external antennas and WiFi boosters to be installed.
Few meters of cable, small antenna and.... miracle!
Better this way and have heat saving house.
it reflects huge amounts of radiant energy transfer from your envelope materials away from the interior of your home, making it that much more efficient to cool, and during winter it helps keep the heat inside the house. The wifi 'issue' just doesn't seem to be that much of an issue when you're talking about one of the core efficiencies in your house, and one of the biggest loads on the nation's energy usage.
From a look at the exterior shot provided, no special effort appears to have been taken to ground the foil. It appears to just be there to keep moisture and/or rabid sheetrock mites from getting into the interior material. I'm a bit surprised that some plastic wasn't cheaper; but it seems otherwise sensible enough.
For those who know more than I about the dark arts of RF propagation, what would the effect be of ungrounded conductive sheets? Substantial signal attenuation? Not much effect? Completely unpredictable absorption and re-emmision that could vary wildly according to the exact geometry of the piece?
In a similar vein, if one had an AP/router that one didn't love to much(not so hard when they start at $20...), what would the effect be of attempting to use the metal foil as an antenna, by coupling it directly to the antenna output? Horribly non-optimized for the frequency, I'd imagine; but would it be expected to Not Work, to Not Work and kill the RF amp, to work somewhat, to work better than one might expect?
...insulation.
The rest of the planet already has it, only they don't build ticky-tacky houses that need them in every fucking wall.
my brothers house in Austrlai has the same problem. The roof is steel tin and they get almost no mobile reception
Author of TFA says he doesn't know if the material he observed has an impact on radio, just quoting the fact that it's "reflective" from a vendor brochure, but according to the same pdf the material is in fact metallic
Yep, sounds like a radio-eater all right. Interesting stuff, too.
At least I won't have to wear my tinfoil hat at home.
It won't be long before 'home wrapped in tinfoil to help prevent brain cancer' is going to start showing up in real estate ads.
Cheers,
Matt
the dead and dismembered are unproven, no war exists.
And the new householder is likely to be none the wiser.
You are telling me that Joe and Jane Enduser don't know about how RF works? Or that their computer is not the monitor? Or that their smartphones are also working off of RF?
And further that there are new homes that are being built without setting up even some basic runs for modern say CAT6 wires? You say that all you need is co-ax? Or some 1900 tech pair of twisted strands?
Oh and the right wing tells me to chant USA USA USA no matter what idiotic news I see? Golly Lassy! Tech Timmy is down a well! Better go run to Fox News with why ignorance is good!
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
I would think you would want a house shielded from all RF in or out so you could use external antenna and control what comes in and out and what is available even down to each room.
I like how Slashdot takes the default position that anything perceived as disrupting internet access is a bad thing.
Maybe some consumers would actually LIKE to attenuate the radio signals passing through, and to and from their house?
I mean, okay from room-to-room, you'll probably want reception, but not necessarily outside.
This is nothing that can't be solved with a few repaters. I mean come on. You bought the house. You'll probably stick around for most of the 30 year mortgage, right?
Oh wait, you're going to rent it out to some poor suckers? Slumlord, FTW!
It may seem funny when these things actually factor into buying a house or not, but they can be a deal-breaker for some.
That surely will help keeping my neighborhood from connecting to my network. *tinfoil wrapping my house now*
I love to complain about stupid things more than your average person, but is this really a problem? Put a repeater in the window. My heating bill, on a 1980s house is by far once of the most cash sucking and depressing aspects of my budget.
And as an added bonus, maybe it'll keep neighbors from stealing everyone's wifi.
Uh, Wifi? I'd think the cell phones (I assume that's what OP means by 'mobiles') are the important one...
Plenty of people including myself only have a cell phone these days.
My apartment's fine, but I have school in a very concrete-and-steel building that has very poor phone reception, which ends up draining my battery in no time. They do have good wifi because of a lot of APs, though. Remember, you can add more APs for wifi, but not for phones.
Surely the savings as a result of engery efficiency would pay for an external access point (if desired) a femtocell box for your cellular signal issues and a faster internet connection to power it all...
This is irritating, but what I think is more irritating is that fiber is not required in all new buildings, especially condos and apartment buildings. It's a huge pain to get it in there once the building is built, and data wiring is just as important electrical wiring in the future. Why isn't this being done?
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Wow, talk about content free.
That article had even less content than the guy who was pushing his blog posts awhile back.
Your insulation 'might' be blocking wifi &/or 3g. But we don't know, we didn't bother to do any actual research.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Instead of a guy looking at a photo we need somebody that has pulled some of the offcuts out of an industrial bin and measured what happens when they send signals at the popular wifi frequencies through it.
We are not supposed to be the couch potatoes here.
My excuses for not doing it is that I have only a small amount of knowledge about RF, no gear apart from a few cheap access points and small antennas, and more importantly live halfway around the world from where this stuff is going into houses. It seems to all be black plastic filling that role around here.
Google it, if you don't know what it is (and why the hell are you on /. if you don't know).
I agree with someone above: this is a double edged sword. A lot of folks are starting to use lighter, reflective materials in order to handle other forms of radiating heat and insulation (you'll see this more in older construction vice newer). Issue is a lot of these materials rely on metallic foils (much akin to those space blankets we all started seeing back in the mid-80s), and people just don't have a good idea as to how these foils interact with radio waves.
I would say in either case (new or old construction), do your due diligence to do an adequate Wi-Fi survey (I'd recommend using ALL the 802.11 standards (a, b, g, AND n)) as well as determining if the residence is either wired or capable to be wired with Cat5e/Cat6. Personally, I'd go the wired route, as it's more secure and you can combine cabling with coax, phone, HDMI, etc. to multiple points in a room, allowing for maximum flexibility. Sure, costs a little extra, but in the end, it's definitely worth it.
Definitely, I live in a new build student accommodation block. I can only get mobile phone signal with my phone sitting on the window sill, and it's only GSM at that. Outside I get a nice full bar 3G connection. The only way I can make phone calls is by using my Bluetooth headset, as if I pick the phone up, calls will drop shortly after. This means I must regularly keep my headset charged and can have a maximum of 4 hours talking with about an hour charge break in the middle, god forbid I forget to charge my headset and someone calls me. It can be very inconvenient.
I may to be moving into a new build elsewhere eventually but I have a feeling I'll have to purchase a transmitter power controllable WiFi access point (adverse to a standard router where the transmitter power is fixed generally) such as a Cisco commercial AP and possibly a mobile phone repeater. Hopefully that will solve both wireless issues if the building also suffers from Faraday caging. Cheap routers really struggle to penetrate this, or rather don't reflect enough times to go out of a window or through a doorway and thus drop off. Not ideal.
While cell phones not working in my house would be a little irritating, I would be very happy to have radio blocking on the outside walls - sure I couldn't use my wireless in the garden, but neighbors and passers-by wouldn't be able to use it either ... AND, most important of all, it would block out my neighbor's networks which would allow my AP to actually use 40 MHz channels and give me closer to the advertised speeds!
than spend $500 more in heating costs every year
i for one welcome our new tin foil energy saving house overlords
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Far less leakage, and less chance of home builders skipping putting in ethernet. All new homes should be wired and not counting on wifi to do the trick.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Here in Texas, the "shiny reflective material" is used to help keep electricity costs down in the Summer. I have a 2500 sq. ft. single story home built in 2009 and get WiFi throughout, no problems. I keep my wireless router deep in the walk-in closet of the master bedroom. Something tells me this isn't as big of a problem as the story is letting on to.
It should be possible to make the material transparent in the radio spectrum but reflective in the visible/infrared spectrum. This would be the best of both worlds.
Probably depends on the area and building styles / economic status. Homes around Northern MI are largely particle-board, I can't see that causing any hindrance to wireless signals.
Here in Aus, we call it sisalation, and have been using it in building since year dot. It does not stop you using wi-fi.
Get one.
Use it.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Call someone that has aluminum siding and aluminum screens on their home as them how their home from 1950 that was resided in the 70's or 80's works for wifi to the garden or the grotto.. This is not new. Nor is it news to anyone that actually has a clue about Wifi or home building in general.
Insulation boards have had foil backing for decades. a lot of other building products as well.
It's just whiny rich people that notice after moving into their new McMansion. Because they are too damn cheap to buy a second AP for the back yard.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It wouldn't be terribly difficult to set up a booster for the house. If a cell signal booster is the price for more energy efficient homes, that seems like a fair trade.
We used to live in a steel house and would have to stand in front of the upstairs window to get a cell signal. It was pretty funny announcing to people they had to go upstairs to make a call.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I live in a modern high-rise building in the middle of a dense downtown area. To comply with fire codes, all interior studs are metal - in fact almost nothing inside the building (besides furniture) will burn. This definitely affects my WiFi - I have my router in my living room and I have trouble getting a usable signal in my bedroom. My solution of course was to wire the place with ethernet and have multiple routers.
On the other hand, I have floor-to-ceiling glass for about 40% of my exterior walls. Thus I see about 30 or 40 WiFi routers from neighboring buildings - with very good signal strength. It's a strange dynamic - it's hard to see nearby routers but distant routers are easy to see.
...and the cost of wiring the whole house w/ cat6e is so low that it was a no-brainer.
I haven't moved in yet, so I don't know how wifi reception will be, but with the ability to have a couple wifi repeaters spread around the house, I'm really not worried.
In the grand scheme of things (the cost of a house), I don't really see the problem here.
So they have now created a new invention, a house to act as a microwave oven. Quick, where are the patent lawyers.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Some houses use chicken wire with the lathe and plaster. Same effect. They have to answer their phones on the patio.
I would think that most if not all new houses these days are wired up in each room for cable and ethernet/phone. Is this not the case? Obviously you still want wireless to work, as I constantly walk around my house with my phone and laptop, but for the most part these problems should be easy to mitigate.
Personally I would be very wary about buying new construction that didn't have wiring to the rooms- who knows where else they may have cut corners!
Early in the 1970's my father redid our living room. Before he put up the sheetrock he put up foil insulation. Our Christmas morning home videos looks like we are inside a spaceship. From outside the light was insane. Of course using those big old super 8 movie camera spotlights probably made things a lot brighter.
We moved from a '70s to a brand new house two years ago.
My Elgato stopped working, the BT Homehub signal doesn't make it to the garden (the Apple TImeCapsule does) and my phone battery doesn't last as long as before.
Other people moved into the street and said they wouldn't bother getting a land line so we see them standing in the front garden to make phone calls.
Heating bills are lower.
My last house was built in 1925, and covered in stucco. Newer stucco is usually some kind of latex goop and doesn't need much of a backing, but this old stucco was basically mortar and needed metal mesh to support it. In this case, it was a heavy diamond mesh like you find on outside stairs and whatnot. The guys who blew insulation into the walls from the outside just loved it...
That being said, I never saw a significant problem with either cellular phone or wifi signals.
Log in or piss off.
"could... unpredictable... potentially"
Call me when there's an actual demonstrated problem. Maybe the new materials will act as an amplifier? The situation would be different from floorplan to floorplan and from one wifi antenna placement to the next. You can hem and haw all you want, but you don't know for sure until you field test.
Houses with Stucco have this issue as well. Builders use a steel mesh to adhere the Stucco to the house which acts like a Faraday Cage.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
I live in Boston, in a crowded neighborhood of old houses. My new neighbors, up on the hill, have put in a super powerful wifi that drowns out the old G wireless point I have in the basement.
I now have to go out and spend money to fix this
PS: at most, I can see 8 of my neighbors, but one of my co workers say he can see more then 10 on a good day
Good for Wifi. Will prevent pollution. I live in a large Condo complex and i see 50 WLANs at the same time. If 20 of them are active its going to reduce my WLAN transfer rate. If i see only 5 active at the same time, it will be much better.
As a physicist: WLAN is not specified to go trough undefined materials. walls of houses are, in general, undefined materials. If you like good wlan coverage in your garden, then place an external antenna or at least an repeater close to the window (unless the window is also metal-coated...).
There's no warranty the mobile phone will work inside buildings!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Its just insulation. It goes on exterior walls to help form a heat boundary. Its not even a little bit new, the observer is just a really shitty observer and never noticed it being put into every building thats been built in the last 40 or so years at least. Example, my cheap little home built in 1977 has it.
It doesn't go on interior walls, you don't generally insulate interior walls, as the air flow through open doors in your home and the fact that your duct system intentionally moves air into those rooms would defeat the point entirely.
Some people do choose to insulate their interior walls for sound dampening, but not with foil backed insulation, they use cheaper insulation without it or specific insulation for sound, which is what we did when remodeling our living room to prevent sound from the TV/stereo from bothering people sleeping in other rooms.
It won't effect your Wifi signal as its on the external walls only and no one would use it on interior walls (even if they wanted to insulate) because its more expensive and just a waste of money in those locations.
If you can't get a signal between the first floor and second floor of your home it has almost nothing to do with insulation and the fact that the antennas used on wifi routers are designed to radiate horizontally from the antenna (perpendicular to its orientation). It would be, in almost every case, a complete waste of RF energy to broadcast a signal upwards from a WAP when for most cases there will be no one above it or below it that its supposed to get too.
Finally ... it has VERY LITTLE EFFECT on the signal. My home is completely wrapped in it, walls and attic, and we sit on a slab, yet I still have no problem picking up and connecting to any wifi access point within 2 houses of me (and we aren't talking about town homes 10 feet from each other, at least 100-150 feet between homes), though its not like I'm getting full speed out of 802.11g with it, though my workshop, which is about 75 feet from my home will consistently get 10mb out of it, and it is insulated with brand new (built 3 years ago) foil backed insulation as well.
Does it effect the signal, sure, everything does. Does it effect it enough to care about it over the massive energy savings for heating and cooling? No, not even a little.
The home owner is likely to be none the wiser about the size of the wiring in his home either, and wether its really designed to be used like many of us where we have several machines in one room functioning as servers/routers/firewalls for our home networks drawing way more power than the home was designed to deliver to a single outlet. As a general rule, if you don't know what that shiny material is, there are far more important things in your home that you should learn about first if your worried about how your technology is going to be effected. Wiring of the home would be top on my list. Clean power is far more of a concern than insulation. Nothing worse than wiring thats too small for the job causing your power supplies or UPSes to continually be fighting surges and spikes due to turning off and on other equipment. Older homes with shared runs using 14 gauge wire to power multiple outlets are far more damaging and problematic than the insulation, they are also considerably more dangerous in a modern world where 10 amps simply isn't enough power for some home appliances at startup (vacuum cleaner, microwave, big plasma TVs). You really want 12 gauge as a minimum, with individual runs from the breaker box to EACH outlet, 10 gauge if you can afford it is a much better choice and far safer. Considering how little it effects the cost of a new build, you'd be an idiot if you were given the option and didn't take it.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
A napalm strike, followed by a B-52 raid using HE, and these problem
houses simply won't be a problem any more.
I'll call SAC and get them on it right away.
- General Buck Turgidson
My house has this stuff--roof only. I can tell you that it completely blocks FM and AM and TV, and significantly reduces mobile phone signals. However, wifi internally works just fine, which is to be expected. I don't see a problem except for those who like to use wifi outside... or are sharing with their neighbors... or for neighbors who have decided that you should be sharing and therefore they needn't ask... Wifi isn't the issue--it's mobile phones. But even that can be fixed with a repeater unit. They sell them for $100. Don't know how well they work, however. In any case, the savings in utility bills, especially in hotter areas, is worth these minor inconveniences.
But the guys in the black van parked in front of your house are having trouble with their surveillance gear. That foil not only messes up WiFi and other radio, it screws up millimeter radar and thru wall infrared imaging. And the mind control beams are less effective as well.
Have gnu, will travel.
I guess sales of home microcells for people's mobile phones will be going up then...
(except for those that the MiL Barrier is a real positive feature, worth living in radio silence for...)
Yeah jackass my house is made from freaking chicken wire. Mylar, lol I got a god damn Faraday cadge.
you say it like it's a bad thing!
I had a few customers whose WiFi wouldn't work in any other room but the same one as the router, no signal, nothing,
but as soon as i was in the same room as the router whoosh, 5 bars of signal max strength? puzzling.
turns out, on some buildings behind the walls (and ceilings) plaster is a chicken wire like mesh that the plasterers use to make the plaster bond to the wall better, making the room RF wise a basic Faraday cage
other buildings have had dual aluminum backed plasterboard (for energy conservation) in the non brick walls again making a weak (than the metal mesh) Farady cage
Great for Plasterers and energy bills, not so much for >2.4ghz microwaves
I'm not worried about the wi-fi because I have a wireless router. But the cell phone reception is horrendous. I take a few steps outside and it's fine. While I was fixing the place up I had poked some holes in the walls and found metal beams inside. The place is like a giant Faraday cage. The fact that it's the bottom floor of a three-story condo doesn't help either.
I just spent $250 (it was on sale, too. Normally it's $400) on a cell phone signal booster. I hope it helps.
Technoli
in that WiFi signals from inside the house cannot be intercepted from the driveway or further away. If you can't hear it you can't intercept it!
The 'shiny' material is Tyvek (a DuPont product) or some knock-off. It is a vapor barrier, not insulation and it is a mesh of high-density polyethylene fibers. They make is shiny so that buyers will think it is some kind of giant Christmas present. Apparently, black felt has very low curb appeal. Most insulation is fiberglass and foil is infrequently used as facing for fiberglass insulation because it requires a 'reflective' airspace to be effective, as it does when bonded to polystyrene. And the foil costs more, so unless there is a site-specific need (limited wall thickness?) it does not get used.
PC Pro should stick to computers. House wraps are not new. They're not even new in the last twenty years. Would you like higher heating bills, or maybe having to put a repeater near a window if you want wifi outside. Though why you would even give a shit if you get wifi outside your house is beyond me.
I've got aluminum siding and it really does mess up cell phones and also things like wireless weather stations.
"Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it." - George Santayana
PLC is always there to help out
So? What's new? Our building got renewed about 6 years ago. At that point we found out exactly what they say. Cellphone signal was gone for two of the three operator available here. Reception was weak for the only available operator. Out at yard all operators gave full reception!
Reason? Thermal radiation insulation using very thin aluminium foil. It's not only in walls also windows are protected. Open window and placing phone just about 5 cm outside, full reception. Close window and place phone 5 cm inside, no reception at all. It's pretty clear situation.
Solution: Buying two mobile antennas and and about 20 cm of cable. Drill hole through the wall, Place another antenna outside, insert cable, place another antenna inside. That's it. Now you have passive pass through for the signal.
P.S. This solution works very well for cellars and basements too, if you want to have signal where it isn't normally available.
The signals can come in the windows and bounce down the halls. Inside radio propagation has and will always be somewhat problematic. Just run some damn wires if it is a problem...
Having done wireless installs in warehouses, I can tell you that baby formula is the worst (liquid in metal cans stacked in boxes.) We'd do our thing and have good coverage. Later on we'd get a call saying that they have a huge hole in the coverage somewhere. We'd go back and find that they stacked baby formula right next to the AP. It was by far the most challenging item to deal with.
People could advertise repeaters harder than before, listing this as a huge problem.
Of course, they tend to be filled with useless jargon. Useless from the perspective of your average person who doesn't know left from blue.
Barry Collins is now added to my list of ignored tech know-nothing moron writers. Right up their with John C. Dvorak.
Dude, if you've got a new house, put copper or fiber in the damn walls. Every new house should be built with this stuff.
I would sell my left nut to be able to throw all my wifi gear away. Even 100M ethernet would beat the crap out of 802.11n since I'm unfortunate enough to have neighbors who also use wifi. But I'm stuck with this shit, because this 1930s house has what seems to be rock-solid walls.
Wifi is the last resort when for some reason, you can't use otherwise massively-superior cables. Boo hoo, you have a modern house so you can run cables and also can't downgrade to wireless. You poor thing!
How very cool. I have dreamed of living in a Faraday Cage! Now, I just need a bank of opto-isolators for the outside antenna array and one of those small Japanese nuclear reactors for an internal power source.
My parent changed from shingle to a metal roof for durability. What they found was that it killed WiFi throughout the house. 20 feet is about the maximum distance (line of sight or not) they can go from the AP. I'm guessing it has something to do with reflectivity of the waves in the house?
We have metallic radiant shielding on our roof decking. We have not noticed any Wi-Fi signal variance since replacing our roof, which included the addition of the radiant shielding.
I've heard that CA has mandated loe-e metalized window glass for heat reduction and energy savings. Will this have an impact on in-car mobile use? Probably.
What freaks me out the most about new homes is the switch from copper to plastic for water pipeing.
Regardless of baseless speculation of TFA..wired ethernet = less latency, better reliability, more bandwidth, less headaches and no driveby/neighbor issues... If it is a new home take some time to string some cat5 before the drywall goes up.. You can get 1000' rolls of the stuff for less than $70 online. Nothing to loose.
In my appartment, I'm getting more than 20 wifi signals. My dumb-ish phone often tries to log into other people's network instead of mine because the signal is stronger.
I'd be happy for my signal not to parasite other peoples'... and reciprocally.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Shouldn't new houses be wired with cat5?
If you work in the home automation industry this is nothing new for you. Most of our clients demand to be able to roam around on their laptops in their 20,000 sq/ft WiFi killing homes - something that can't be accomplished with off the shelf equipment. We're constantly installing commercial grade WAPs and cell phone repeating systems in these large homes.
I'm glad I live in New England. They don't use the foil, even in new builds. My house is an old expanded Cape. haha. Plank construction. When we put roof vents in we went through many circular saw blades. It's much stronger than the post beam / plywood construction you see now. My planks are 1" thick and 8" wide
if you have this problem then (im assuming you are or have access to a handyman).
1 run a conduit from the house to a nice spot near/ in the graden
2 get your hands on a router and a nice secure enclosure
(should be more or less watertight and insulated)
3 run a power lead and cat6 down the conduit and connect your inside router and the new one in the garden
4 cover the enclosure with a gnome bench or something
(don't block any vent holes of course)
5 Profit!
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
by cutting down on both infrared and electronic surveillance. This is a _good_ thing.
I think spray on stucco would be a much worse issue since it often uses a wire mesh as the form. Faraday cage?
They come in the dark, only in the darkest.
Right. That's a vapor barrier, which prevents air from leaking in and out. Some are aluminum foil, and some are Tyvek (paper over Mylar film.) The concept is decades old. It's rare to put a vapor barrier in an interior wall, though insulation between an unheated garage and the rest of the building is normal.
Unless you have conductive windows, it's not going to block cell phone reception or in-house WiFi much. If you have too much house for one WiFi base station, there are WiFi boosters which forward packets.
If only they made all homes out of high quality materials as such! Nowadays, you're lucky if they use plywood for exterior walls; since minimum grade does not require the builder to do so, it's very unlikely you'll see a lot of houses being built with this reflective material.
At most, this situation would increase the occurrence of multipath, which is normally a bad thing for 802.11-2007 devices (a/b/g). But along comes 802.11n-2009 and spatial streams (taking *advantage* of this signal characteristic via spatial diversity). Long story short, this multipath actually ends up working to 802.11n's advantage. Problem solved. Next.
My older house (1945) has a lot of walls that are made out of a metal sheet covered in rock or stucco or something. I usually have to go sit in the same room with the router. Defeats the purpose of wifi altogether.
...stating that the insulation is a problem.
The article never actual states that the insulation has been shown to interfere with WiFi. It just says "might" and "maybe" a lot.
This is an example of the typical shitty reporting being published nowdays. Next time, sit down and look at the wavelength and the penetration depth into the foil. Then do an actual test with the insulation and a wifi router BEFORE publishing the article. PC Pro should be embarrassed.
Anyone building a new house, who doesn't wire it with CAT-6 or similar while the walls are open, is nuts.
I wired my existing house (built in 1899) and have never regretted the expense. (When's the last time you ever heard, "Shit, the wired is down"?)
I'm way ahead of you tin foil hattists! My house has a tin foil hat! Check out:
http://flashweb.com/blog/2007/01/house-wrapped.html
http://flashweb.com/blog/2006/12/cap-sealed-on-tight.html
Since the foil is on the outside we have no trouble with WiFi interference for our computers which are all inside the house. No problems with reflection and the signal goes right through the concrete walls, interestingly.
http://flashweb.com/blog/2007/06/transparently-wireless.html
Also this foil wrap converts wifi signals into heat... albeit a small amount thereby reducing the amount of time your furnace runs!!!!
FragHARD or don't frag at all
...and older homes or buildings with metal lath and plaster. Going just two rooms away is like crossing the street and going 50 feet away. I'm already planning new placement of my wi-fi router/modem. Verizon (yeah, sure, FiOs) won't give me equipment with any version beyond "g", so my MacBook's "n" potential is suffering. We rent, so we cannot modify the structure, nor install wiring of any kind in or out, but the landlord is amenable to some changes like re-routing the Verizon cabling. Interestingly (to me), the MacBook performs much better than the (Verizon) Droid in this area. Hmmm.
I've seen something similar to this with cell phones when I'm at my parents' house. The Wifi works fine since it's within the house already, but cell phone reception there is terrible. I blame the metallic "sheets" that were inserted all through the inside of the roof.