I had a little problem with my WiFi base station after a firmware upgrade the other day, and I figured that the thing reset or something–I could not pick it up under its old name, and figured that it reset to some generic name. The problem was, I couldn’t figure out which one, as my computer kept on picking up other signals–lots of other signals. Not all at the same time, either–only five or six at a time, and they kept changing. I had to read all the different signal names and then unplug my base station to see which one disappeared… and, as it turned out, the base station was none of them, it simply wasn’t being picked up. In the meantime, I went through the list… and counted a total of twenty-one different network signals.

The puzzling thing is, most WiFi networks have a limit of 30 meters or so, less than that in actual practice. Most won’t even reach between floors of a building, especially one with heavy construction like this one. Seeing as how I’m on the 21st floor of a high-rise and there are no other buildings that close, I have no idea what I’m picking up. There are at most eight apartments around me, but even if every one of them uses WiFi, that still doesn’t account for the other dozen. I can only figure that my computer is picking up signals that are weak as hell but nonetheless register somehow, at least enough to get the network name across. I must be picking up stray signals from at least a few different buildings.

In fact, a few have to be from other buildings–I’m picking up at least a few signals that purport to be free-access networks (though they are always password-protected), and I’m pretty sure that nobody in this building does that–in fact, I can’t see how any location even near this building is offering that. Maybe there are some stronger WiFi networks in the area than I am guessing–not just your standard home-network stuff, but something a lot stronger. Interesting.