You are calmly at home watching streaming videos, browsing the Web, playing online or making a video call from your PC and the wireless connection is not working well, it’s slower than normal, is cut Every so often, it disconnects you and interrupts your activities.
Maybe even the mouse, keyboard or wireless controller They seem to have no signal or the Bluetooth headphones have connection failures, the music cuts out and they make strange noises.
The easiest thing at that moment is blame your operator, thinking that the router they gave you is very bad or that the rest of the home’s network equipment such as WiFi extenders or PLCs are having a problem. But you check it and everything seems fine.
And, in addition to these aforementioned factors, there are others that can harm our wireless connectionssome of them difficult to imagine since they are not easy to intuit, such as interference from our neighbors’ networks or the one we are going to focus on today and which has to do with other elements of our home: the popular USB ports.
When USB ports interfere with the WiFi network
Image: Intel
It may seem the strangest thing to point out to the USB ports of our equipment as those responsible for the WiFi connection not working at home, but the truth is that they could be the culprits for certain interference problems.
And specifically the connectors USB 3.0 type, which due to their specifications can create radio frequency interference that affects the 2.4 GHz band also used by WiFi networks. It also seems to affect the 7.5 GHz band (not yet in use), although not the 5 GHz band used in WiFi.
The problem is not new, and was detected more than 10 years ago by companies such as Intel, who carried out a study on the matter in 2012, concluding that indeed The USB 3 ports on many devices can add background noise and therefore interference to WiFi and Bluetooth networks..
Image: Intel
This can cause signal cuts when, for example, we are using a wireless headset or a wireless mouse or the WiFi at home is slower.
The problem is magnified in teams that have the antennas and USB 3 ports close togetheras may be the case with laptops, some tablets, desktop computers or small all-in-ones, routers, etc. And it happens mainly while the USB port is in use, since the poorly insulated connection cables become true interference-generating antennas.
How to avoid or minimize the problem
If we have suffered these effects of cuts in the connection of our WiFi or Bluetooth network Every time we connect a peripheral to a USB 3 port, there are some measures that we can try to put into practice to mitigate its effects.
As they point out in Intel’s own document or on the pages of some equipment manufacturers such as AVM, TP-Link or Asus, the best solution is to try to move the WiFi and Bluetooth antenna ports away from the devicefor which we can use USB extension cables that are well insulated and are not the typical ultra-thin ones that come standard on many devices.
Image: Intel
It is also possible to avoid the problem better electromagnetically isolating the USB 3 connectors on the outside. For example, Intel tested it with silver paper and achieved some improvements.
Finally, if we do not need high transfer speeds we have the option of connecting our equipment directly to USB 2.0 portswhich are free of these interferences in the 2.4 GHz band since they work at lower frequencies (although logically they are less fast).
Cover image | Compare Fiber
More information | Intel
In Xataka Smart Home | Internet does not work: how to know where the problem is beyond passing a simple speed test