From: black.hole.4.spam{at}gmail.com (Don Hills)

In article , "Rich Gauszka"
 wrote:
>
>According to the survey, the addition of Christmas and holiday ornamentation
>(trees, decorations, etc.) to a standard office setting reduced wireless
>signal strength by 25 percent. Furthermore, AirMagnet claims that signal
>deterioration was increased by a factor of one-third, and made signal
>distribution more uneven, reducing strength by an additional 10 percent in
>different locations.

I would finger the tinsel as the main offender. Specifically, those long
"fuzzy ropes" of tinsel that are composed of thousands of thin
metallised plastic strips, each a bit over an inch long, attached at one
end to a string. Each strand forms a tiny radio antenna,
"grounded" at one end. These are known as "quarter
wave" antennas because they absorb (and radiate) radio energy when the
wavelength of the radio wave is 4 times their length. And you know what one
quarter of a wavelength of a 2.4 GHz wireless LAN signal is? A bit over an
inch... (1.2 inches).

This characteristic was employed to jam radar in World War 2 and is still
used today. "Window", "Tinsel" or "Chaff", as
it was variously called, was/is composed of long thin strips of foil cut to
a half wavelength of the radar it is intended to jam. (Half wavelength
because both ends of the antenna are free, instead of one end being
grounded.)

--
Don Hills    (dmhills at attglobaldotnet)     Wellington, New Zealand
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