Does radiation affect wireless internet connectivity?

I'm just wondering. I'm guessing it is all a coincidence but since a day or two after the quake my wireless devices are having a hard time with connection speed. It could be something I'm not aware of. I did replace all internal wiring in my house, router, modem, and wires that go from point A to B. Still having issues...and a lot of people here are having the same issue. Tech support is telling me the line to my house is reading normal. Thank you in advance for any help or advice in this matter.

I'm running a modded modem and I am also running a lot slower. Gone from 96mbps down to around 25mbps. Sure it has nothing to do with the earthquake, but might have something to do with the sun and magnetic fields, I don't really know...

Well, radiation does cause interference with technology; however, nobody has reported anything from the west coast, which is expected(maybe not the best word for it, but moving on..) to be hit the worst/hardest, and earliest. I'm sure if they haven't experienced any interference from the radiation, you wouldn't be experiencing it in Illinois.

[ sorry if the last line seems rude; it is definitely not my intention! ]

I think the US is syphoning bandwidth to help the Japanese government. Perhaps that is why there is a general sluggishness to the internet.

Could be that a lot of people are currently accessing the same sites as you.

It's impossible that radiation from Japan has gotten anywhere near the US yet.

Holy explicative, you took my thread lol. I have had the absolute worst internet connectivity (wireless) for the past few days. Normally I can download a 100mb file in less than a minute, today its taking me over 6 hours it feels like dial up. The network also drops out periodically for a minute then comes back without having to be reset or anything. Few of my neighbors are having the same problem, as of right now my "speed" is showing 6mbps I have never seen it that low.

Signal strength seems to be fine, just the speed.

There is probably 100X the normal amount of traffic flowing through the net right now because of what is going on, plus you have sub-systems that are being taxed hard because they have to compensate for the lack of connectivity in Japan, so all traffic is being sent through secondary operation centers and causing routers that aren't as widely used to be pushed to the limits. All traffic to Japan is being routed through Russia instead of from the west coast. Look up "tracert" to see where YOUR traffic is going and how long it takes or try speedtest.net if you want to see what your internet provider is giving in terms of throughput.

To answer your question, no, the type of radiation from Japan would have no impact whatsoever on internet or wireless unless you were sitting in the fallout radius.

Hope that helps!

~Namaste

I was wondering if rerouting was an issue but it has been really bad since the first reactor explosion. We all know what the gubment tells us isn't always accurate! Thank you all for the replies and useful info. I'll just hold on and see what happens.

Originally posted by SonOfTheLawOfOne
There is probably 100X the normal amount of traffic flowing through the net right now because of what is going on, plus you have sub-systems that are being taxed hard because they have to compensate for the lack of connectivity in Japan, so all traffic is being sent through secondary operation centers and causing routers that aren't as widely used to be pushed to the limits. All traffic to Japan is being routed through Russia instead of from the west coast. Look up "tracert" to see where YOUR traffic is going and how long it takes or try speedtest.net if you want to see what your internet provider is giving in terms of throughput.

To answer your question, no, the type of radiation from Japan would have no impact whatsoever on internet or wireless unless you were sitting in the fallout radius.

Hope that helps!

~Namaste

I've been on speedtest.net all day off and on trying to figure WTF is going on. My test results go from 400kbps.....yes 400. To 2600 in a matter of 1 minute. It's nuts, I've never seen anything like it.

reply to post by DisturbedToo


Perhaps it's HAARP

In all seriousness, the 2.4MHz spectrum is really narrow & a lot of devices use it (WiFi, cordless 'phones, cheap walkie-taklies, radio control toys & etc).

Perhaps someone nearby (next door) has purchased a new cordless 'phone. They tend to frequency hop all over the band and screw badly with WiFi.

I am from ohio, and for the past two days my internet has been absolute CRAP. my acer is running worse than usual during class and my brand new pc keeps disconnecting then taking like 30 minutes to reconnect. D: im getting quite aggravated.

Been having issues here also. Connection and speed and it's always been great until about the same time the big CMEs started hitting.

I'm in SoCal with verizon fios 15/5 and ran a test with my laptop over 54g on speedtest: got 14.6Mbps down and 5.5Mpbs up... while watching netflix on the wii. So I'd guess its something else causing issues, perhaps the routes packets are taking.

On the other hand, some types of radiation can interfere with electronics and communications but that would likely be ionizing particles (beta / gamma) flipping bits within circuitry. Most alpha particles are ionizing as well but cannot penetrate many materials; for instance the epidermal layer of your skin is sufficient to stop the particle, as is the case of a computer.