It's been revealed that homes built with metal wiring (Chicken Wire) inside old plaster walls exist at almost perfectly the right wavelength of a 2.4GHz Wi-Fi (802.11) wireless broadband network signal. The problem is that such wire makes setting up a Wi-Fi network (both internal or one received externally), extremely difficult because the walls would simply absorb its signal.

There's of course nothing new about the fundamental idea of walls impeding wireless networks, though it's still interesting to learn about how Chicken Wire effectively acts as an almost perfect "Faraday cage" (metal structures that inhibit or stop electricity and waves) for Wi-Fi transmissions.

A full report can be read in The Wall Street Journal, which notes that walls with Chicken Wire can absorb around 75% of the signal while basic plasterboard without it will only chomp down on 33%; useful to know. Credits to Thinkbroadband for spotting the link.