Did the power company accidentally fix my parents' Wifi?
March 13, 2022 5:31 PM Subscribe
My parents had been reporting that the range of our wireless router had shrunk, and was no longer including the entirety of the house as it had before. Unrelatedly, the power company came by today to fix a problem of "loose voltage" going into the ground of our neighbor's house. Now the problem has resolved itself? ::confusedjackiechan.jpg::
Two-story house: The router has, for years now, been on a desk in a second-floor room that is in the front of the house. So the signal has always been weakest -- but still available -- in the kitchen, which is on the first floor, in the rear of the house. On Thursday they reported to me that internet connection would be lost on any device, laptop, iPhone, etc. that was brought into the kitchen, and the signal was noticeably weaker throughout the house.
I figured the router, being at least 5 years old, was beginning to show its age in some degradation of service, and was prepared to go out and replace it when the power company closed off our block for some emergency repairs. It's rained recently, and apparently they had notice voltage loss from old, frayed power cables (which are underneath the roads in our part of the city, not suspended from poles) and had even marked off certain patches of lawn in front of our neighbor about 15 feet from our house as being dangerous to walk on.
We actually lost power temporarily in the home while they did repairs, but they've now run a 110v line from the nearest lamppost into our home to make up for it until a bigger crew can (unfortunately) tear up the street for repairs. So I left for Staples to get a new router, but when I came back my father reported that he'd gone back to using the laptop in the kitchen and all seemed well again.
Since the electrical emergency was the only major change happening in or around the house between Thursday and today, I have to wonder: Could this loose voltage going into our neighbors lawn actually have been the cause of weak wifi signal in our house, and if so, do I mark this as resolved and return the new router or should I expect it to recur when they go back to using (or replacing) the underneath-the-street power lines?
Two-story house: The router has, for years now, been on a desk in a second-floor room that is in the front of the house. So the signal has always been weakest -- but still available -- in the kitchen, which is on the first floor, in the rear of the house. On Thursday they reported to me that internet connection would be lost on any device, laptop, iPhone, etc. that was brought into the kitchen, and the signal was noticeably weaker throughout the house.
I figured the router, being at least 5 years old, was beginning to show its age in some degradation of service, and was prepared to go out and replace it when the power company closed off our block for some emergency repairs. It's rained recently, and apparently they had notice voltage loss from old, frayed power cables (which are underneath the roads in our part of the city, not suspended from poles) and had even marked off certain patches of lawn in front of our neighbor about 15 feet from our house as being dangerous to walk on.
We actually lost power temporarily in the home while they did repairs, but they've now run a 110v line from the nearest lamppost into our home to make up for it until a bigger crew can (unfortunately) tear up the street for repairs. So I left for Staples to get a new router, but when I came back my father reported that he'd gone back to using the laptop in the kitchen and all seemed well again.
Since the electrical emergency was the only major change happening in or around the house between Thursday and today, I have to wonder: Could this loose voltage going into our neighbors lawn actually have been the cause of weak wifi signal in our house, and if so, do I mark this as resolved and return the new router or should I expect it to recur when they go back to using (or replacing) the underneath-the-street power lines?
Had they unplugged and replugged the router's power since they started to notice the problem? If not, it's possible that the reboot due to the power outage was what fixed it.
posted by pocams at 5:56 PM on March 13, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by pocams at 5:56 PM on March 13, 2022 [3 favorites]
if the old router is "at least 5 years old" it's unsupported, unpatched, and vulnerable to a lot of exploits, unless you specifically know otherwise because you're a networking person and have been maintaining it yourself. i advise you to replace the router anyway, especially considering you've already bought the replacement.
with the old router, what you should do is take it with you and throw it away/recycle it yourself, off-site. i've found that decommissioned, obsolete gear has a tendency to get pulled back out of the on-site trash after i leave and hooked back up somewhere because "nothing was wrong with it" and/or "i thought it'd boost the signal". myself, i usually cut the power cord in two just for good measure.
posted by glonous keming at 6:15 PM on March 13, 2022 [2 favorites]
with the old router, what you should do is take it with you and throw it away/recycle it yourself, off-site. i've found that decommissioned, obsolete gear has a tendency to get pulled back out of the on-site trash after i leave and hooked back up somewhere because "nothing was wrong with it" and/or "i thought it'd boost the signal". myself, i usually cut the power cord in two just for good measure.
posted by glonous keming at 6:15 PM on March 13, 2022 [2 favorites]
Sounds like your parents or your parents neighbours power feed lost either the service ground or neutral (if you are in Canada/USA). It's less common now but it used to be a pretty common problem where a bad or floating ground would cause all sorts of goofy problems for switched power supplies so it's possible. Or the reboot thing. No real way of telling besides monitoring the connection for a while.
posted by Mitheral at 7:08 PM on March 13, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Mitheral at 7:08 PM on March 13, 2022 [2 favorites]
Does your area have 'smart meters' for electricity?
Around here the smart meters initially operated at 2.4 GHz, which is the same as a lot of older WiFi, and they were quite a bit more powerful than home WiFi.
The power company may have upgraded a smart meter to a different frequency when they were fixing the neighbor's ground, and no longer be competing with your WiFi.
posted by jamjam at 8:00 PM on March 13, 2022
Around here the smart meters initially operated at 2.4 GHz, which is the same as a lot of older WiFi, and they were quite a bit more powerful than home WiFi.
The power company may have upgraded a smart meter to a different frequency when they were fixing the neighbor's ground, and no longer be competing with your WiFi.
posted by jamjam at 8:00 PM on March 13, 2022
Five years is a good run for a consumer WiFi router so replacing it wouldn’t be a bad idea. But like others I suspect the reboot might have helped with an immediate problem.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 1:43 AM on March 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 1:43 AM on March 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
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posted by noloveforned at 5:55 PM on March 13, 2022 [5 favorites]