Behaviour of Wifi within steel boat

[Kay1981]

Good evening all

I am hoping all you wonderful folk may be able to help me understand the "science" of Wifi within a steel boat.

I grasp that the boat is not in fact a true Faraday Cage, however I assume its close. I have found that Steel blocks wifi (so we wont be getting signals from external Wifi's) and I have found that Steel reflects Wifi.

In layman terms could you help me understand what could be happening to the Wifi within the boat. We have a wireless dongle which all phones, tablets and laptops connect to. Is the Wifi accumulating and reflecting throughout the boat and unable to "escape"?

I hope Im making some sense here. Also I believe the range can be 20 - 60 meters that some can reach. Anyone know the radiation distance of mobile phones?

Thanks for your time

 

[DelJo63]

It's just like audio in that it reflects back onto itself and distorts the signal so as to not be useful - - sort of like have 2,3 stations in the same room on the same channel number - - just chaos

 

[DelJo63]

Re distance mobile phones. When connected to a cell town, it can be a goodly distance, but when using a wifi connection, it's not the phone that is the limiting factor - - it's the wifi station (in your case, the dongle).

If the dongle were on-deck, it would reach a fair distance above deck and over the water, but be little or no signal below deck.
Of course, weather is the bane of electronics, so that's not very practical.

 

[Kay1981]

Thank you!