Microwave interference causes iMac Airport causes connection to fail

Did anyone experience this problem and what did you do to resolve it?

I have iMac with OS X v10.6.6 and D-Link DIR-655 Xtreme N Gigabit Router (latest firmware). The connection between my router and airport is encrypted:

WPA Mode: WPA or WPA2
Cipher Type: AES
Group Key Update Interval: 3600 seconds.

When I turn my microwave oven on, the microwave waves definitely interfere with the signal strength between airport and the broadband wireless router. This is expected as the electromagnetic noise will interfere with wireless communications. However, what not expected is that after I turn the microwave oven off, the airport completely stops working. I have to manually cycle airport off and then back on to make it work again.

I observed two symptoms (depending on the position of iMac with relation to the microwave oven).

1. The network utility shows Link Status as active and the transfer statistics continuously show transmission send/receive errors.
2. The network utility shows Link Status as Inactive.

When I turn wireless security off, the airport recovers from symptom #1 above.

The problem is 100% reproducible.

Is this an airport bug?

I had an HP laptop sitting side by side with iMac. HP laptop recovered from signal strength loss without any problems. It seems HP laptop was able to detect the problem (or avoid) and recover. iMac did not recover.


Thanks,

Oleg