Christmas Lights and Your Wi-Fi – Is There A Connection?
December 9, 2015672 views
Christmas Lights and Your Wi-Fi - Is There A Connection?
We keep on hearing that Christmas Lights interfere with your Wi-Fi connection. This year a researcher from Ofcom analyzed the link between the Wi-Fi and the Christmas lights and found out that your internet does get slow because of that to a small extent.
Does That Really Happen?
Wi-Fi relies on radio waves to transmit internet data. Christmas lights are responsible for emitting a weak electromagnetic field which has the potential to interfere with the radio waves transmitted by your router. The increase in Christmas lights would significantly increase the level of electromagnetic interference. Similarly, the closer the lights are to the router, greater the chances of interference. However, before we draw any conclusions, the level of interference also depends on the type of Christmas lights that you are using. The interference will be particularly more when you are using Christmas lights built using the old technology. This is particularly true when you are using Christmas lights made of cathode ray tubes or bulbs.
Modern day Christmas lights do not use the cathode ray tube technology. They instead use the all new solid state LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes). These lights usually have an external electronic flashing controller and they do not create any radio noise. There are some LED lights with a built-in electronic flashing controller chip inside the LED light bulb. This built-in device also creates some of its own interference. Various tests have been conducted by different internet enthusiasts to measure the level of impact these Christmas Lights have on the speed of internet. There are no hard and fast rules in terms of percentage difference that would impact the internet speed. The variance is only visible in some of the cases and when the Wi-Fi internet is placed in a closer proximity to the Christmas Lights. However, there is nothing to worry about and you will not feel massive drop in internet speeds.
