Electromagnetic Interference of WiFi signal

I note your use of "lift" as a noun and not a verb suggesting your British origin....

Australian.. but I am old enough to belong to the British Empire.

I get VDSL from the local phone provider and this is my only option at this location.

I guessed right.

If the EM blast comes from the motor, what difference does the proximity of the electrical wires to the signal wires have?

EM is transmitted over electrical cables and particularly switch gear. The motor itself may produce nothing at all. It depends on the motor design they used. I would not be over worried about the actual source but the very fact that the problem occurs and is very difficult to fix.

The problem is due to VDSL is transmitted over balanced pair cabling of low grade.. ie phone wires. If this was shielded cat 5 you would have a lot less problems.

Perhaps a thick layer of lead around the motor might be the solution...

Plate steel is far more effective.. but lots of it.

But getting the building management to replace the low grade phone wiring with high grade shielded ethernet.. and if at all possible move the modem to the basement wiring rack.. or just somewhere else in the building. If you are adjacent to the lift (elevator) controls then your going to find it very hard to block.

There is a very simple tester.. a cheap AM transistor radio.. tuned to almost anywhere in the broadcast band.. off station.. and listen to the static. If the static comes in bursts.. every time the lift goes.. then your vdsl will basically slow or stop working.

A good router will also include a spectrum bit loading graph or at least the values.

I had a quick search and found this.

http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php?topic=12385.0

http://www.abload.de/img/bitloading-2013-03-04ilaba.png

To find out how you are affected by the Elevator noise.. the bit-loading graphs need to be saved in real time.. and you should also then be able to pick the main freq of the noise and harmonics. Tones along the bottom of the graph are standard bin numbers.. each tone covering 4khz.. so the actual frequency of VDSL2 goes up to 30mhz.

Here is an excellent set of power point slides showing more technical details of vdsl and the impact of impulse noise.

CSIRO is our science department of govn.

http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/atzioumi/jdsu/xDSL%20Overview%20Oct%2008.ppt

The theory for this has been around for ages but the actual usage is mostly located in UK where they went to Fibre to the Node system instead of fibre all the way to the premises (FTTP) which is what US companies like google are doing.. We are also stupidly doing FTTN here in Australia.. but it is also popular in big buildings where it is called fibre to the basement. FTTB. It means they can run a single fibre connection into the building and share it over the old phone infrastructure.

It is highly susceptible to noise. Which means you probably need to tailor your listening to downloading the music to a local iTunes or music server and distribute it locally.. the RF noise will not affect ethernet or wifi which are microwave. Don't stream from online source as your internet connection will come and go with every warm body going up and down the elevator.

You might want to look over this support document from Apple:

Potential sources of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth interference - Apple Support

While elevator motors are not specifically mentioned, the info about power stations might confirm your suspicions:

Power sources

Certain external electrical sources like power lines, electrical railroad tracks, and power stations can cause interference.

So, you might want to ask the building management to check to make sure that the elevator power station is not exceeding the recommended levels for radiation.

You might also try plugging the AirPort router into a protected power supply to help shield it from voltage spikes on the electrical lines.....which may or may not be affecting the router.

Otherwise, about all that you can do is try each wireless channel manually, to see if one might work better than another. Unfortunately, this is a tedious process, with no guarantee that it will help. Start with the 2.4 GHz channels first, since most WiFi interference issues occur on that band.

Let me suggest it is not affecting wifi but rather internet.

Generally power installs will not be transmitting RF in the microwave region.. that would be most unusual.

And dangerous if the power levels are high enough.

But it can absolutely bring ADSL or VDSL signals to a halt. Especially with modern inverter electronic controls.. they literally belch out RF at frequencies up to 2Mhz. And if the main cable ducts have power and data cabling near each other.. definitely shouldn't be touching.. then all manner of strange and wonderful things can happen.

Test by streaming from a local source not web.. if the lift then has no effect on your streaming you can be pretty sure the main internet connection is being affected.

Tell us exactly what your internet setup is.

Do you have ethernet to your apartment? Or is it personal Internet over phone or cable connection or building wifi??

Australian is British, no?

No.. and don't let an Aussie hear you say it.. 😠

We would have joined in.. !!

https://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/uk/guy-fawkes-day

Are you not still part of the Commonwealth?

Yes.. think Canada.. it provides a head of state.. so we don't have presidential elections.. quite a good thing.

I was around and remember being abandoned when Britain joined the EU. The joke is I lived the see the end of that experiment. They would have done better sticking to the Commonwealth.

Were you around for the transition from sail to propeller?

Not that old.. !!

Are you suggesting that the cabling to the motor is causing this as it passes by my unit somewhere in the walls?

Electrical noise travels over long distances via the electrical wiring.. and data cabling which running parallel to power receives noise by induction. The noise can be generated by the motor or switch gear or speed controllers. If it is an ancient system it can be loads of ancient rheostats.. whatever it is .. it is no problem at all to audio.. ie phone system.. which is what the wiring was for.. but it is a massive problem for data attempting to use ancient phone cabling.

Get the transistor radio and walk around the building.. keep the volume control in one position and go wherever the noise is loudest.. that is your source.

I have yet to try your suggestion to to stream local content, but your suggestion that the problem is not the wifi being interfered with but the internet signal coming thru the wires because of proximity to electrical wires that themselves interfere with the signal seems curious because the interruption occurs only with each successive energizing of the elevator motor.

The motor is not drawing much current when the elevator is not active. As soon as the elevator begins to move, a good deal more electrical current is flowing. If the wiring and elevator motor are not shielded correctly, a good deal more radiation is being emitted when the elevator is active.

Streaming local content will quickly tell you whether the elevator is affecting the Internet connection or not. If you find that the problem continues when you try to stream local content, that pretty much narrows things down to interference that is affecting the wireless network in general....no matter whether an Internet connection exists or not.