[Closed] Wi-Fi Radiation

The client is leaning on user-friendliness being their main USP.

By including features that nobody actually needs? Interesting approach 😀

That a timer is provided in the router web-interface so that you can easily set it to switch off Wi-Fi automatically at night.

My Belkin one has a powersave function that you can use to turn it off at night automatically.

I would not bother with a wifi off button on the admin page. NO-ONE who needs a user friendly router will EVER bother to do that - guaranteed.

If you want to make powersave userfriendly, give it simple profiles so you can select 'overnight', 'overnight+work day' or 'custom' or something.

A button on top would be much more useful, but still not very useful as you would just turn the router off with a switch when you turn the telly and sky+ and everything else off before bed.

Wow... what a thread. FWIW the BBC and ITV are transmitting radio waves at you, and they put Loydd Webber in their's. If that doesn't shrivel your todger nothing will...

Most wireless routers scale down to lower bandwidth when not being used by the way... but that's only so smaller band width can get in-between the molecules in your tin foil hat...

Oh and if you get muesli don't eat the brazil nuts, that's where they hide the thought controlling radiation...

Button without login = security risk.
Button with login = too much faff to use.

If you really, really needed a 'disable wifi' option, I'd want a physical switch on the router itself.

TBH though, I'm not really seeing anything to gain from it (other than in very niche circumstances) that couldn't be achieved by just switching off the whole router, certainly from a 'green' perspective anyway.

What might be more use is the option to schedule it. WiFi goes off automatically when it's the kids' bedtime, for instance.

Yup physical button, with maybe even simple on/off time setting on an LCD display.
I have a feeling that a large proportion of the people who'd like to just switch the wifi off and on in a simple fashion probably won't have the technical competence to point a browser at their router in the first place.

The client is leaning on user-friendliness being their main USP.

So this will already have come out when they spoke to all their users, no?

With respect, if your design brief is 'make shit up as you go along' then I guarantee with cast-iron certainty that whatever the end product is, user-friendly will not be its USP. You need to establish exactly what users' requirements are before you start, which you don't appear to have done.

Soliciting input here is fine, of course, and arguably could be included as part of your initial consultation / market research. But you simply cannot design a user-centric product without any users. If you were my developers, I think I'd be getting a little twitchy.

hmmm - I can see that this topic has got everyone's hackles up.
I shall leave it there.
Cheers all!

But you simply cannot design a user-centric product without any users.

There is a lot of refining and optimising of products and interfaces that you can do without any user feedback. In real life, that type of activity takes up a lot of user experience folks' time. We rely on our experience, education and training to do what we can to simplify, clarify and harmonise what is often a tangled mess of requirements, objectives and existing work.

Unfortunately, the client / product owner does not always want to hear that he does not know his users well enough to define or envision a product. Ultimately it's the person with the budget who has the final say, and UX is still often seen as a 'nice-to-have' or something that can be added in towards the end of a build. Education is a constant part of our job and sometimes feels like a losing battle.

Getting to the stage where UX has enough buy-in, understanding and credibility to be able to go back to a business and say 'we are going to talk to users to find out what your product should [i]really[/i] be' is almost a Holy Grail of user experience design. Not quite, perhaps, and it's getting better, but it's still the reality in many cases. Getting budget for research up-front is not easy.

So I think you're right, Cougar, but perhaps coming on a little strong.

AlexSimon - Member
hmmm - I can see that this topic has got everyone's hackles up.
I shall leave it there.
Cheers all!

Please tell me you see why though!!

Do you also do the "Sciency Bit" for shampoo ads?

It seems very 'Daily Wail', to get concerned about wifi, I regularly see features where they're getting very upset about wifi in schools frying their little darlings brains.
I'm staying near Start Point at the mo', and there are two chuffing great radio masts near where I'm living, and a sign on the fence says 'No Parking', and smaller text explains that the radiation can adversely affect cars!
Your wifi is insignificant.
You don't live in Cornwall, by any chance?

This thread pissed me off so much I decided not to bother...

I'm just going to have a depressed sigh and then facepalm.

any radiation that is high rated is dangerous not only wifi radiation but also any networking radiation, so how much radiation pass through one our uses with router ?

Anyone got a .44 magnum, I feel like ending my misery?

Will all those jimmy Saville broadcasts have made paedophile?

What about a non email-off button?

I wouldn't worry about it. The weaker your router wifi appears to your computer/phone, the more energy your computer/phone belts out trying to talk to it. Bear in mind you sit next to your computer, not your router.

FritzBox has night mode to toggle WiFi off.
Also has a button to toggle it on/off.
Also has a setting for low/high WiFi power too (unsurprising, since all the chipsets allow that for EU/US/Japan etc. laws, and the linux driver lets you toggle between them all anyway - they're just defaulted to region of sale). Probably with a minor hack you can also enable the extra channels that are allowed elsewhere.

Kaesae to the forum please 🙄

I could throw my Home Hub out the window and hit the local exchange where the mast is mounted so the rad levels are not relevant to me but........as my Hub sits next to the computer I would like a simple switch to stop it broadcasting and use it hardwired on the basis that nobody can hack in to a non-existent signal.

Im a RF systems design engineer, and Im more worried about the radiation from light bulbs, than wifi.

Do not let your concerns about wifi spoil your enjoyment of life 🙂

So I think you're right, Cougar, but perhaps coming on a little strong.

I get that a lot. (-: No offence meant, I was trying to be helpful but tone is difficult in text.

as my Hub sits next to the computer I would like a simple switch to stop it broadcasting and use it hardwired on the basis that nobody can hack in to a non-existent signal.

Apparently there's no way to switch it off (it's an early 1.0 Homehub).

geologist - Member
Im a RF systems design engineer