Microwave Leakage.

[#1]

In my kitchen I have a monitor into which is plugged an Amazon Fire TV stick which is used to watch TV while I'm cooking.

I noticed that the Fire TV stick occasionally lost connection to my router for a short time.

After a few days it suddenly struck me that these breaks in connection coincided with the Microwave oven usage.

As soon as the microwave was started, the connection dropped and as soon as the microwave timer reached zero, connection was immediately restored.

This got me thinking about microwave leakage from the oven and I looked on Amazon for a detector.

There are quite a few on Amazon but they generally attract poor reviews.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this situation please.

[#2]

I had this problem with a previous router, don't think your microwave is leaking - just that some interfere with the wifi signal.
https://io9.gizmodo.com/why-does-your-microwave-oven-mess-with-the-wi-fi-connec-1666117933

[#3]

Thanks @dvorak, that linked article was interesting reading.

I have switched the Fire TV device to 5Ghz and it's now working better.

[#4]

According to Wikipedia "Consumer ovens usually use 2.45GHz" - which is pretty close to 2.4GHz to ordinary Wifi.

I'm surprised wifi works at all near a microwave oven since it relies on very sensitive receivers, so even a tiny amount of leakage would saturate any wifi device.

[#5]

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@dvorak wrote:
I had this problem with a previous router, don't think your microwave is leaking - just that some interfere with the wifi signal.
https://io9.gizmodo.com/why-does-your-microwave-oven-mess-with-the-wi-fi-connec-1666117933

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Yet from that very link..

The problem is that both microwave ovens and Wi-Fi operate on the same frequency, 2.4 GHz. In theory, a properly shielded microwave shouldn't leak any radiation, but the reality is that they leak quite a bit, resulting in electromagnetic, or radio-frequency (RF), interference. And yes, Wi-Fi is a radio signal, but it's broadcasting on a much higher frequency than most broadcast radios operate on.

Unless it's leaking then there should be no WiFi interference. Those radio waves have to escape in order to interfere with other radio waves. It's that simple.

I've been thinking about this issue for several months and wondering how the hell the damn things are actually safe. The front door has a panel you can see in through - with a fine metal mesh yes however the holes in it are big enough to see through and MICRO waves are just that - microscopic in length meaning they should easily fit through and escape. And we wonder why so many people have cancer?

Without going into too much detail, I have a medically confirmed skin problem that was triggered by mobile phone radiation. People laugh until I show them the report back from the hospital lab where a skin biopsy was tested and confirmed to react. If you saw the photos of what it did to me you would genuinely start to worry. I still have flare ups now and have to avoid spending too much time around bright visible light. The good news is that along with swimming in WiFi in most heavily populated areas, Theresa Maybe is working hard to bring 5G here ASAP. You'll be able to download movies in less than a second and grow tumours overnight.

I spent years being a nay sayer about wifi and one stupid day i decided not to worry about EM radiation while using 4G. Big mistake.

[#6]

Many years ago I did some work with microwave ovens. i also built a simple microwave detector. This showed that the main source of leakage was around the door seals, not the filtered glass door. With respect to leakage through the door mesh this might be of interest.  http://cdn.lairdtech.com/home/brandworld/files/EMI%20Rule-of-Thumb%20for%20Calculating%20Aperture%20...

If you go to the rule of thumb chart on the second page you will see that holes of .07" will attenuate 2.4GHz by 60dB, that is, 1000 times. This gets progressively better as the hole diameter reduces. These dimensions are easily achievable whilst giving reasonable visibility, it's simply a question of how closely the holes can be etched.

In terms of microwave dimensions you can refer it to the speed of light. Very approximately the speed of light is one foot per nanosecond. The wavelength of a 1GHz signal is one nanosecond. Therefore a one GHz signal has a wavelength of approximately one foot. Consequently the wavelength of a 2.4 GHz signal is approximately 5 inches rather than the micro dimension some may assume.