Will bad weather such as rain, wind and high temperature affect our internet access?

When you are watching Internet TV, can you blame the bad weather when the weather is interrupted by a storm?

Very likely! The weather will affect the performance of Internet connection in many ways. This may include physical damage to the network, water entering electrical connections and wireless signal interference. Perhaps some types of connections are more susceptible to the weather than others. People's reaction to the weather will also affect your internet connection.

How does the rain affect your internet connection?

Internet connection is much more complicated than routers and cables in our home. There are many network devices, cables and connections (various types and outdated) between our home and the websites we visit.

Internet connections may involve different kinds of physical connections, including copper wires used in old telephone networks and more modern optical fiber connections. It may also involve wireless connections, such as WiFi, microwave and satellite broadcasting.

Rainwater can cause physical damage to cables, especially where the telecommunications network uses old infrastructure.

ADSL-type connections using the old telephone network are particularly vulnerable to this type of interference. Although many people may have used fiber-optic broadband networks, this can still be achieved (in part) through existing copper wires (in the case of "fiber-to-the-node" or "fiber-to-the-cabinet") instead of modern optical fibers ("fiber-to-the-home").

Most of the wiring of the Internet is underground, so if there is a flood, moisture will enter the cable or its connector. This may seriously interfere with the signal, or even completely stop the signal by reducing the bandwidth or causing a short circuit.

But it's not just the signal connection in our home that is affected. Wireless signals outside houses or buildings may be affected by rainfall, because water droplets will partially absorb signals, which may lead to low coverage.

Even if the rain stops, the impact can still be felt. High humidity will continue to affect the strength of wireless signals, and may lead to slower connection speed.

Copper cable and changing behavior

If we use ADSL or fiber-optic broadband as your Internet connection, it is likely that copper telephone lines will be used at least in some transmissions. These cables are designed to transmit voice signals instead of data, and their average service life may now exceed 35 years.

There is also a behavioral factor. When it rains, more people may choose to stay indoors or work at home. This will inevitably lead to an increase in network usage. When a large number of people increase their internet use, the limited available bandwidth is rapidly consumed, resulting in a significant slowdown.

This is not only in our home, but also further aggregated to the network, because our traffic is operated by other families, and eventually the whole city and country will join.

Heat waves and strong winds

Extreme cold weather is usually not a big problem. Heat may be a more common interference problem. Our network equipment may run slowly in extreme high temperature. Even the cable may be physically damaged, thus affecting the connection.

Imagine that your computer fan doesn't work, causing the equipment to overheat and eventually crash. Although the equipment itself may be fine, the power supply may encounter extreme conditions. The same problem will also affect the network devices that control the Internet connection.

Satellite Internet services for rural users are also vulnerable to extreme weather, because satellite signals must be transmitted over long distances in the air. Radio signals are usually unaffected by the wind, but hardware such as satellite antennas may sway, vibrate, bend or move with the wind.

In fact, many times, people's behavior is the main reason.

For most users, the impact of rainfall will be slight-unless they are subjected to major physical impacts, such as underwater cables, or try to use WiFi outdoors during a storm. So it is absolutely that the weather affects your surfing the Internet. But it is unlikely to affect most users at the same time.

If you like watching network TV programs, the slow network speed in rainy days is probably caused by other people's behavior. Like you, they hide indoors and surf the internet, causing network congestion.