Yes, but only in one direction and if you use UDP instead of TCP. Also your MTU needs to be small enough for the packages to fit between the blades of the fan, otherwise that causes package fragmentation.
/s
Yes, but the tailwind becomes a headwind on the way back to the router so you won’t see any actual speed changes. Putting a fan on both ends will cancel each other out too.
You need to change all the gaseous air out for either liquid or a solid as waves propagate faster through them. You should start with filling your house with liquid oxygen as a nice half step so you still have something to breathe easily, as solids are a bit more tricky.
The general idea is correct, but since we’re dealing with electronagnetic waves, they travel slower in any medium. So pumping out all the air of the room would technically make your wifi faster.
Liquid oxygen has (I think) a refractive index of about 1.2, so it would make the signals 20% slower (still very fast)
NERD
Dude waited 11 months of lurking and not posting or commenting anything, and breaks their silence with that attractive string of knowledge. I’ve got mad respect for them.
I’m a nerd too but come on, he’s replying to an obvious joke with high school physics. There are more layers, do you want a more pedantic teardown?
- Most likely, the “Wi-Fi speed” the Reddit poster needs to improve is the data rate, not latency.
- The data rate can be improved significantly by increasing RSSI with a better physical setup, WDS, higher power etc. However, if the rate is too low at full bars, the bottleneck is the ISP plan or hardware specs.
- The latency cannot really be improved without changing hardware or software, as the highest impact one can influence is in processing by the router and device. Some settings such as DNS cache size can improve latency in some cases with some downsides.
Meh, we all have our personalities. A lot of people hate my personality, but I just figure it’s best to assume everyone on the internet is a stranger that could be a potential friend. If they answer things blunt or love to extrapolate with excruciating detail… Who am I to judge. I just make jokes and hope they don’t accidentally make someone feel bad. Like I really wanted to reply to yours saying that you were just trying to show off and get me to call your words attractive as well ; ) haha.
No, the fan will blow the packets all over the place, which is fine for UDP, but any TCP/IP connection will suffer. Place the fan in front of the router so that the blades will catch any dropped packets and throw them back into the datastream.
uh, hi. If you place the blades in front of the router, it will start chopping the packets before they even reach. You need to use an bladeless fan
Just gotta adjust the MTU and fan RPM
that sweet spot
No need, that’s why we have the Don’t Fragment bit in the IP header
Alright so I’ve now got a router using cell signal hardwired into a Roomba randomly roaming the halls so everyone gets shitty connections all the time.
Everyone know that.
There are some stupid questions.
Tbf, it’s not like physics stuff is always obvious, especially when dealing with relativity or quantum mechanics. It just feels obvious if you’ve already learned about the research that’s already been done.
It isn’t even remotely intuitive that light should have a max speed that can’t be added to by moving its source relative to other things. Plus, light does interact with matter, but it can only be slowed down by it.
So less a stupid question and more just one that isn’t educated about something.
Yeah yeah, I know. I was mostly just kidding. Everything is magic if you’re ignorant and we shouldn’t shit on people for not knowing something and props to them for asking and seeking knowledge and all that.
But it’s really sad that very basic science like radio waves which are introduced in 5th or 6th grade could be so completely misunderstood.
I remember my 6th grade science class having a lively 15 minute discussion about whether or not rockets can work in space since there’s no air…. We’re looking at videos of rockets working in space and then debating whether or not they do. 🙄
I remember my 6th grade science class having a lively 15 minute discussion about whether or not rockets can work in space since there’s no air…. We’re looking at videos of rockets working in space and then debating whether or not they do. 🙄
This feels a tad different than the person in the screenshot. Screenshot person fundamentally misunderstood how radio waves worked. Meanwhile, 6th grade you absolutely understood how rockets worked, at least to the level of understanding that they need air to work. Because you were right the whole time, those kinds of rockets can’t work in space without air. The slightly absurd solution that you wouldn’t readily know without a deeper understanding of how the rocket is built is that a rocket literally brings its own air with it!
Yeah- you make good points. I think what I was upset about was that we started with a given (they obviously work in space) and then half the class argued they didn’t for a while.
A better question would have been “how can they work since space has no air in space?” which leads to great q & a I think.
Yeah, what if I’m moving my router at the speed of light, not so intuitive now
Quantum physics is not logical, every other field of physics is! Shame that instead of logic we are taught fucking equations, as if we could look up logical conclusions like equations…
Even less intuitively, the fan would increase the air pressure between the router and receiver, slowing light down slightly. So it would end up (imperceptibly) slowing the signal down.
Oh, wow. You really triggered them this time.
I mean technically the weather influences your ping, since the waves travel slower at higher air pressure
Edit: Accidentally got it the wrong way around
They would travel slower at high pressure and high temperature due to more interactions. Low temp and low pressure are the opposite. Sound is faster with high pressure and more complicated on temperature.
The Wifi isn’t waves made of air, the wifi is waves of the electromagnetic spectrum, similar to visible light, and they travel faster than you can perceive.
So no.
But you can do something similar with a microwave oven. It’s just that any signal making it through the radiation of the oven would be disfigured and useless.
I mean, that was my first thought… but would there be a measurable difference?
I mean lets be clear, with a fan you’re adding like 8 mph to something going 299,792,458 meters per second. You won’t notice anything.
But like, vacuum vs glass vs glass moving half the speed of light, could be an interesting what if. Relativity is always where my mind glosses over in physics.
Unless the air particles make real contact with the photons then you’re not adding anything to anything, and the ones that do will be deflected.
Imagine a rock in space coming close to hitting a planet, or even entering a solar system at all. Similar scale.
No but if you fill the room with water then it should be way faster
Sort of a serious answer because I’m bored: You’re thinking of speeding up the air when what you should be thinking about is speeding up the waves. But then your waves are reaching you plenty fast already with latency being in the single digit ms range. Not much of a point in trying to accelerate that, really. You won’t notice anyway.
If you feel like your internet connection via Wi-Fi is slow then the bottleneck is probably not with the Wi-Fi part of your network but the Internet Access Point behind it. Or even further down the line.
Now this is based on the assumption that you are in a fairly typical network environment, i.e. using semi-current hardware with moderate, if any, electromagnetic interference in the area. If you’re living right next to a high voltage transformer station and using a router from 2008 then, yes, you’re going to have Wi-Fi performance issues.
But in most cases, people complaining about “slow Wi-Fi” are actually suffering from Internet connectivity issues.
Think of it this way: If you enjoy your McDonald’s from the local franchise but you can only get 100 burgers per hour from them (of course you need MOAR!) then upgrading your 320hp Camaro to a 400hp Mustang is not going to enable you to pick up appreciably more burgers from the drive through in the same amount of time.
There are plenty of things in a normal home that can cause serious signal attenuation (just installed new energy efficient windows? whoops! those IR blocking coatings severely attenuate microwave signals too). Poor AP placement is a very common cause of “slow wifi” and has nothing to do with your internet uplink.
Again, you point out why “normal” is an iffy notion to begin with. Thank you for elaborating instead of just downvoting. 🙂
Failing to fully utilize the existing antenna diversity options on modern routers/APs might be another common cause that comes to mind.
Yes but you have to put a slit in front of it so the wifi waves turn into wifi particles.
It’s not 1 way traffic. Signals go both ways. To increase your wifi speeds, have 1 fan blow from your router to your device and 1 fan from your device blow towards your router. Signals go faster in warm air so make sure to pump up the thermostat. It also goes faster with less CO2 in the air so make sure to open all windows (unless you own a Mac). Lower moisture in the air also improves speeds, so crank your AC on max. Also placing both your router and device in rice helps.
device in rice
Say that in any linux forum :)
If you can create a vacuum with said fan, it can be faster.
Maybe if you made this vacuum encapsulated in a line. Surrounded by shielded metal and plastic.
Depends on the direction the fan is facing. If it’s blowing towards you, that increases air pressure in front of it, which means more things for photons to interact with and a lower speed of light, thus slower wifi. Away from you would decrease the pressure and result in faster wifi due to the increased speed of light. Theoretically at least. I don’t think this effect is measurable.
Edit: thinking about it, the electromagnetic noise from a fan motor would likely be worse than the benefit. You might even be able to detect that
I like this question tbh
Gotta get me one of those oscillating routers.
WiFi is waves in space, not air.
Followup: Can I get a fan that moves space instead of air? I need to make my wifi faster.
Check on Amazon for a “Space fan”.
Waves in the electromagnetic field that permeates all of space, along with many other fields with different topologies and particles.
and you can speedup your upload by switching the fan direction
