With Christmas almost upon us, your festive decorations are likely already up. But many people may not know Christmas tree lights might be interfere your home’s wi-fi router. Let Express.co.uk explain how to ensure your internet connection is that little bit more reliable over the festive period.
Electromagnetic signals emitted by Christmas lights can be bad for your wi-fi.
Wi-fi signals can be interrupted by anything that disrupts broadband connections
Although a few lights may not have much impact, the aggregate of hundreds of them can amplify their effects, resulting in dropped connections.
The technical name for this type of problem is Repetitive Electrical Impulse Noise (REIN).
A simple method to improve your wi-fi in these circumstances is to increase the distance between
your router and your Christmas lights.
Any electromagnetic field created by your lights will get weaker with distance, so placing your router as far away as possible should be minimise interference.
Christmas lights: Could your tree decorations adversely affect your internet connection? (Image: Getty)
Christmas tree decorations: Electromagnetic signals emitted by Christmas lights can be bad for your (Image: Getty)
It is also important to make sure that you have an ADSL broadband filter installed on your phone line to keep interference to a minimum.
The quality of your lights will also have an impact on how much interference they are likely to cause.
Poor quality lights with unshielded cables will be profoundly more problematic than a good quality set.
More modern LED lights should cause less interference.
Christmas lights are likely to be only one of many electronic devices in your home.
TVs and computers will also impact on interference with your wi-fi signal.
It is also advised is to keep your router as far away from these devices, and electrical cables, as possible.
Many WiFi networks still operate on the 2.4GHz frequency.
When you consider how many other household items such as microwave ovens, baby monitors and Bluetooth devices also operate on or near this frequency, it is easy to appreciate how things can become get congested.
Christmas tree decoration: The problem is called Repetitive Electrical Impulse Noise (Image: Getty)
Christmas tree lights: More modern LED lights should cause less interference (Image: Getty)
Thankfully, most modern routers have the option to transmit your wireless signal at 5GHz, and most modern devices are compatible with this
frequency.
By enabling 5GHz in your router, and connecting your compatible devices at this frequency, you can overcome the problem of interference in the 2.4GHz range.
This can be done in the WiFi section of your router’s settings.
Rachel Rothwell, regional director for southern Europe and UK at Zyxel, said: “The short answer is yes, Christmas lights do affect wi-fi, however, they don’t cause more interference than anything else.
“Wi-fi signals can be interrupted by anything that disrupts broadband connections.
“The reason is all to do with electromagnetic radiation.
“Everything from lights to microwave ovens uses electromagnetic waves to carry information from your broadband router to your mobile device, or computer.
“But everything that has electricity running through it generates an electromagnetic field, and this causes interference to the electromagnetic waves attempting to travel through.
“Fairy lights are a mass of wires carrying a current which creates a small electromagnetic field and this leads to interference.
“However, there are steps that can be taken to ensure your network is operating at full capacity, meaning your fairy lights may not cause as much disruption – after all, who can imagine a Christmas without fairy lights?”
Christmas fairy lights: Others believe decorations do not degrade your wi-fi connection (Image: Getty)
However, Sundar Sankaran, Chief Wireless Architect at Ruckus Networks believes Christmas and wi-fi are compatible.
“We can confirm it’s safe to put up your Christmas lights without degrading your wi-fi connection.
“We bought four of the craziest LED fairy lights we could find, took them into the Faraday cage and used a powerful spectrum analyser to determine if the lights were emitting any energy that would interfere with wi-fi.
“We then did a second test setting up a Wi-Fi network with an access point and client devices to do a ‘lights on’ and ‘lights off’ test to see if there was any degradation of wi-fi performance.
The result? Nada. Zip. Zilch. LED Christmas lights emitted no detectable interference in the first test, and had zero effect on wi-fi performance in the second. Suffice it to say that LED lights are not the scrooge of wi-fi-mas.”