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macbook123

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Feb 11, 2006
1,869
85
This should be a really basic question: Is the Airport Extreme sending WiFi even if I'm connected to it via Ethernet?
 
Yes, unless you disable the Wi-Fi radio. (It doesn't know you don't want it if you don't tell it you don't--and it is possible to use both at the same time. For example, everything in my house is wired, but I leave the wireless radio on at 10% power for the sake of my iDevices.)

If you want to do this, you can dig around in AirPort Utility (located in /Applications/Utilities) to do so: click Manual Setup, stay on the General pane, go to the Wireless tab, and choose "Off" for wireless mode. If you just want to turn the radio power down, click "Wireless Options" and you'll see a space to do so. I do so because my house is small enough, the neighborhood dense enough, and my devices close enough that I think it's really all I need.
 
Thanks. Great. Also, does anybody know how wifi routers compare to cell phones in terms of electromagnetic radiation output? I'm taking the recent statement by the WHO about a possible link between cell phone usage and brain tumors somewhat seriously (use a wired headset whenever I talk more than 10 seconds on my phone) and want to make sure I don't expose my family and self to similar risk at home.

My understanding is that this is only problematic on the transmitting side. For example, if I sit in the living room 30 feet away and watch a movie I'm not sending any data and am far away from the wifi source with the energy density of the field decaying as 1/r^2. Therefore what I'm exposed to should be orders of magnitude smaller than the kinds of exposure the WHO is warning about in cell phone usage, while somebody sitting right next to the router would receive large amounts. Am I imagining this correctly?

On the other hand if I were to upload an HD video to Youtube from my laptop, presumably I'm exposed to a lot even if the wifi router is far away. Somebody sitting near the router on the other hand shouldn't be exposed to that much Is this correct?

Thanks.
 
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