Wi-Fi and microwave oven question

I work with wireless networking at a university.
There are several Wi-Fi standards and two major RF frequency ranges used. Both ranges are open to unlicensed use.
You mentioned a device supporting 802.11b/g/n. That device only has a 2.4 GHz radio and is susceptible to interference from microwave ovens that use the same frequency band.
802.11a and 802.11ac work in the 5GHz band where there is less interference but these devices usually need to be closer to the wireless access point.
802.11n is unusual because the standard may apply to either band. The 5 GHz devices were usually designated as 802.11a/b/g/n.
The latest 802.11ac is 5 GHz only.

Sorry for the technical wall of text.
All microwaves leak some interference. The issue is the low cost radio in your device and possibly your router or AP.

 

List of 2.4 GHz radio use - Wikipedia

As I read that, it sounds as if poor design of the power supply is the most likely problem, not the oven itself.
If popcorn outside the oven stats popping, suspect the oven!

 

Placement of the access point and phone can affect things too. We had an AP in a lunch room that worked OK until they placed a microwave oven right under the AP. We relocated the AP.
Distance from your wireless access point, along with the materials the signal must penetrate are factors too.

 

I would recommend getting a new device that supports 802.11 ac. You will have to read the specs at the manufacturer's site, GSM Arena, et al. aren't always accurate.

Disclaimer: I do support for an Android device manufacturer. Views expressed do not reflect my employer's opinions. If you subscribe to an inexpensive prepaid service, you're probably buying more trouble than it's worth.

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+10,000

802.11 AC is wonderful. Coverage and range is great as is speed. One thing is most of your neighbors will not have it yet. Lots of great price routers out there. They are backwards compatible for a/b/g/n. Obviously, your devices need to support 802.11 AC to take advantage. Samsung S6's and up support 802.11 AC as do others.

 

Pretty much asked and answered.

Fun Fact:
Ever the brunt of culinary prejudices, the UK gave the world the first magnetrons, which are the heart of radar systems, and thus microwave ovens....initially called "radar ranges."
Legend has it that an American engineer's melted candy bar was the 'apple falling from the tree' moment that sparked development of this technology, but truth be told there was so much cross pollination in this field during World War Twice, that it's difficult to separate the countries' relative contributions but generally speaking microwave ovens are considered to be, for better or worse, a UK invention.

Bonus Fun Fact.
If you're one of those people who like to worry about zany things like electromagnetic pulses and CMEs, and you don't want to be associated with 'prepper' sites selling mylar bags and "RFI Shielded" junk then the humble microwave oven can serve as a cheap and dirty "Faraday Cage."
If you're not familiar with things like CME and Faraday cages then don't worry about them.
Really.

It's like asteroid strikes or whether or not coffee is good for you or bad for you.
Worrying about it won't really accomplish very much.


So.....back in the 80's microwaves were fairly expensive and weighed about as much as a Prius.
Now?
They're less than $100 and they don't affect the gas mileage when placed in a Prius.
Do not presume that because you paid more for an appliance that it's better.
It might have more advanced cooking modes, and there might even be better means of channeling the electromagnetic energy within the cavity, but microwave ovens are still a source of microwave energy, and some of that energy is probably getting out of your 'Faraday cage' and interfering with your phone's wifi.
As mentioned earlier. depending on the location of your router(s) and about a dozen and a half other things, your wifi signal might not be particularly strong in that part of your house to begin with, so very little in the way of an additional interfering signal will be required to disrupt your phone.


Now....for the fun part.
People get confused with the difference between radiation and radioactivity.
It's mostly a branding thing if you think about it, but if you're concerned with the adverse health effects of microwave "radiation" then I would submit that some of the same strategeries that are used to mitigate ionizing radiation might be helpful.

Military folks like things simple, so we think in terms of time, distance, and shielding.
Protecting Against Exposure - ANS
Since you probably do not spend hours and hours of time looking into the front of the micro wondering when your frozen entree will be semi-edible, and since large corporations do not like nuisance lawsuits, I'm guessing that your Panasonic microwave is not exposing you to harmful amounts of electromagnetic energy otherwise your phone itself and your home router might represent a greater health threat given the "time" and (in the case of your phone) "distance" portions of the supposed threat.

Your call.
Me?
I treat it like asteroid strikes and CMEs.

My advice would be to think about it over a bag of microwave popcorn.....

 

To get full benefit of 802.11ac your wireless router or access point needs to support it too. If it too only supports 802.11 b/g or 802.11b/g/n then you will still have issues because the 802.11a device would likely connect much like your current phone, at 2.4 GHz 802.11n.

 

That's what I meant when I said "lots of great priced routers out there" but I didn't flesh it out. (Pre-WWW and the BBS dial up time frame, I worked with X.25 (X dot 25) through and up to the current specs)

 

We still use x.25 in the phone biz for some of the older monitoring tasks, although these systems are rapidly being replaced with IP stuff.

X.25 is NOT ineffective, unreliable, or slow....especially for alarm/status monitoring.

HOWEVER (comma!) it's getting harder and harder to find people who know what it is or how to use it.
WE technicians are getting to be ineffective, unreliable, and slow.....

 

We had the same issue with our microwave. Buying a new AC router won't fix your problem if your device isn't compatible with 5 GHz. Changing the wifi channel on the router from the usual default of 11 to 3 improved signal strength for me. It also costs no money. Microwaves tend to interfere with the higher channel numbers. I used a wifi analyzer app and found a lot of my neighbors used channel 1 so I used 3 as a best compromise situation.

 

NO
1 6 & 11 are the only non-overlapping channels.
Channel 3 will interfere with 1 and 6.

 

Did you just define a "union"? Zoom, out a here . . . .

I heard a person say X "point" 25 once trying to sound smart and was clueless how bad it made him sound to those that knew.

 

I am also a X.25 veteran, in 1987 I connected 300 Honda dealers to their distributor via x.25. (The dealers used 1200 baud async modems and called a local X.25 PAD, only the distributor had a 56k X.25 PAD right in the computer) It could handle 16 calls at a time, but I think that was a computer limit, not X.25

 

Sorry I got so technical on this.

 

Forgot to mention that cordless phones & baby monitors can interfere w/802.11 b/g/n signal. Fish tanks will mess with 802.11 signal in general.

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especially when the phone is in the water.