Came across some rather powerful magnets at work which led to some experimentation of various sorts. Ended up bringing one of them home. Computer is hooked up to a standard twisted pair which supplies an extremely slow connection. Tests were performed with the computer idling, as well as during uploads and downloads.
With the magnet sitting on the phone line, and a timer and transfer rate program running, no differences could be detected with or without the magnet. There did not appear to be any problems with the information and images up or downloaded.
By varying the distance of the magnet from the wires and moving it extremely rapidly in a circular manner, incoming and outgoing data could be thoroughly scrambled or only slightly disrupted. Once, and then unrepeatable thereafter, the connection was lost. No way to know whether the magnet was the cause or not.
Even with a moderately passable understanding of electricity and magnetic fields, I was actually surprised at these results. I’ll be in search of a gauss meter that can be borrowed, to quantify and compare the strength of the magnetic field being used. This was an amazing magnet being played with, but still the results were unexpected.
Are there any thoughts out there that might help those of us with less than adequate training to more completely understand what happened here? My guess would be that any offerings need not go back as far as magnetic fields, wire, and induced flow. Personally, my hang-up seems to be with a permanent magnet that can be carried by one person accomplishing what was experienced.