Remember when some jokers started selling Faraday cages for Wi-Fi routers on Amazon, claiming that it would protect the user from wireless signals?
this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2025
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well i mean they're not lying
Maybe if use smaller, tighter squares.
I'm just impressed they labelled the WAP.
Get a bucket and a mop for that wireless access point
*Wet Access Point.
"I see the problem, your AP is in the Faraday Chasity Cage. Closing ticket."
Putting my horny robots in the faraday chastity cage
Yeah boss the RSSI numbers look great!
This is a 2.4 GHz directional WiFi antenna. Only the back element is connected to the transceiver. All of the other elements are there to focus the signal. Anything metallic within a few feet of an antenna will have a substantial effect on the signal. Think of it as light, because it is, only transparency of materials is a bit weird. The biggest issues will come from metallic materials that are earth grounded and anything with a wire length that is close to the wavelength of the radio light or below, especially around half and a quarter of the wavelength. That pictured wire pitch is spaced very close to the approximate 2.4 GHz wave length. For example most antenna are an insulated trace on a circuit board that is insulated with ground up to a point and then there is a small circuit element that stops the ground and the actual antenna trace continues for the respective light wavelength to transmit or receive. All an antenna is here is an exposed length of single conductor wire.
Even if this was right, which it isn't, wifi stopped being 2.4Ghz exclusive almost 20 years ago. You have 5Ghz and since 5 year ago or so, 6Ghz, with significantly shorter wavelengths.
And if I look at the frequency spectrum I see that all my neighbours use 2.4GHz (9 are in channel 8) and I got the entire 5GHz spectrum to myself.
Channel 8? I thought modern routers automatically select 1 6 and 11. That must be some ancient equipment around.
Probably because for most people as long as it works it works and there's no reason to upgrade.
Sorry, but 9 networks on channel 8 can hardly be described as something "working". I'd bet you barely get a 1mbps on that, and a crazy jitter and packet loss.
That's just an AP. That's not a directional antenna for a wireless bridge. You can even read the AP sticker on it.
Yeah, It looks like a Cisco Aironet 2702i WAP.
All those confident words they typed... for nothing. Lol
I must be missing the joke or something? That's literally what this is. It's an AP not a directional antenna. I have used a ton of directional antennas. Hell I have one that I'm using to get my network to my garage which is 1/4 of a mile away.
I was agreeing with you
Ah lol I gotcha!
I think they were trying to say that the cage in front with the AP behind, acts as a directional antenna. Similar to how Yagi antennas have metal elements that aren't connected in front of the actual antenna.
But I don't know enough antenna theory to know if that's correct.
It'll more likely act as a faraday cage.
I guess lol
Faraday was here!
Hmm I don't think I get this one.
Is it because its in a cage? I don't think that will do much to block the WiFi antenna.
The bar spacing is smaller than 2.4GHz radio waves. It absolutely will affect signal. Should have used a plastic cage.
Are they really that big? Huh, TIL.
12cm
Fascinating, thanks for the info
If you liked that, check microwave doors design.
I really enjoyed the Technology Connections video on Michaelwave ovens, actually.
Michael has such a cleaner design than that MikeRoweWave crap.
Michealwaves have like 200 times more michaelfarads of capacity.
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(4 replies)
Wifi is a fickle beast, though you may be right.
The elements of the cage will probably interfere, but won't straight up block the signal. To be an effective faraday cage, holes in the material must be no bigger than 1/10th the wavelength.
2.4GHz wifi has a wavelength of 12cm, and 5GHz is about 5cm...so holes in the cage should be no bigger than 1.2cm for 2.4GHz, or 0.5cm for 5GHz.
I may expect some signal reflection and likely a high noise floor as a result to being so close to a hunk of metal. That'll cause some problems.
Problem #1 is this AP is oriented vertically on a wall. The antennas in these models are designed to be parallel to the floor, and usually not much higher than 15ft.
2.4GHz wifi has a wavelength of 12cm
that's actually massive, I thought it would be like half a centimeter at most
Newer standards are substantially shorter at 5GHz and 6GHz, but this comes at the cost of significantly worse signal penetration through walls.
Which in a gym will be will be fine.
Faraday cages cannot block stable or slowly varying magnetic fields, such as the Earth's magnetic field (a compass will still work inside one). To a large degree, however, they shield the interior from external electromagnetic radiation if the conductor is thick enough and any holes are significantly smaller than the wavelength of the radiation
I'm certainly no expert, but something tells me the cage in OP's pic doesn't fit the criteria to act as a faraday cage.
E: Nope, I'm wrong. u/deegeese has informed me on how big the wavelength is.
The mesh is not dense enough to be a true Faraday cage for 2.4GHz, but is dense enough to hurt signal strength.
Probably not for a MIMO AP. The whole idea is that you solve the equations to optimize in the presence of multipath. It's legit wizard shit but it's the reason why your cell phone works in a parking garage, because the optimal channel is bouncing off the ventilation shaft. For any reasonably modern AP, it should work the same way. This might hurt a bit but not that much.
MIMO will solve lensing issues but not internal reflection or absorbance.
So like OP says, it’s a signal strength issue.
It says WiFi is "slow" not "off."
I have definitely personally experienced WiFi instability with metals in between the WiFi and a PC.
Looks like possibly enough to make it drop a bunch of packets to me at least.
It will not act as a Faraday cage, the holes need to smaller for that, about 1 cm max. However, wifi signals do get disturbed by a cage like this due to the low power of these signals.
The mesh is just about the size of the wifi wage length
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