Can Christmas Lights Really Slow Down Your WiFi Connection?

With Christmas just around the corner, there will be a lot of folks surely frequenting the Internet either through the old cabled connections or the modern wireless tech known to many as WiFi.

There will be a lot of browsing, emails and voice calls which are the mediums you can do thanks to the fruits that the Internet brings but one has to wonder if the connections will hold up considering connections will be congested.

So with that in mind, some may be looking to either improve their connections or do some preventive measures to ensure a reliable and stable connection throughout the Holidays.

But there is one issue that some are asking and this is on whether putting up Christmas lights would have any bearing as far as web connectivity is concerned.

According to NBC News, some technology companies it could affect the quality of WiFi connection folks would have though minimal.

Daniel Capini, the vice president of marketing for xG Technology says such is possible though the effects it may have are not that dramatic.

For the record, xG Technology is a company that develops interference-resistant wireless communications for customers that include the military.

While it is true that some electronic gadgets to generate electro-magnetic fields, Christmas lights only emit a small amount of energy that done really pose much of a problem for folks who are wary of how they can affect the WiFi connections in homes.

This case normally holds true for lights with unshielded wires as explained by someone from Linksys who is a well-known manufacturer of routers.

"If you use lights with unshielded wires, then it's possible it could slightly affect radio frequencies of any kind," says the source. "It's unlikely to be noticeable or detectable, unless you wrapped the lights around your Wi-Fi clients."

But in all, the belief that WiFi connections are disrupted by Christmas lights, as mentioned via news.com.au, is nothing to be totally alarmed about. There are a lot of other factors to consider and if one wants to get down to the middle of it all, there are other home electronic items that have to be taken into consideration like microwave ovens and even wireless phones.

"Are Christmas lights going to be end of human communication? No. But a lot of things are making the problem worse," says Caprini as far as the issue goes.

Well the simplest solution could be to place your router a bit farther from Christmas lights and the radio frequency emitting devices such as the microwave or even the wireless phones.

That and of course the problem of probably seeing your provider failing to hold up due to the bulk connections expected this Holiday season, don’t be surprised to see some erratic connections particularly when it comes to video/voice calls.

In essence, the whole thing is not an isolated case but as far as Christmas lights are concerned, it is just a small (perhaps only a fraction) of the problem since most may already be around but are not really given much attention until now.