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Chicken Wire Hinders San Francisco Residents' Wi-Fi and Cell Reception

by Caleb Johnson on January 4, 2010 at 01:44 PM


What do you get when you place a bunch of hip, wireless-gadget-loving folks in a city crammed with historic, pre-World War II homes? Apparently, a serious Wi-Fi problem. According to The Wall Street Journal, many San Francisco residents have trouble accessing wireless Internet, and, in some cases, receiving a cell phone signal -- all because the chicken wire that may line the walls of their homes.

Before people started using drywall in the '50s, the mesh wire was used to support the plaster in many homes. As it turns out, chicken wire creates what experts call a "Faraday cage," which means it makes a net that catches the 2.4-gigahertz waves of the Wi-Fi network. "It's the old bumping into the new," says Mike Scott, a technical media manager for D-Link Corp.

The most effective way for San Francisco homeowners to remedy this problem is to rip out the wire from the walls. But that's messy, time consuming, and could potentially cause more problems. That being the case, many have found shortcuts -- like building antennas to boost the signal or running Ethernet cables from room to room.

Old homes are wonderful places to live, but we'd rather hole up in a tiny apartment and have wireless freedom, rather than live in a big, antique Wi-Fi dead zone. [From: The Wall Street Journal]

Tags: bizarre, cellphone, funny, internet, network, san francisco, top, web, wifi

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