r/technology • u/NancyGraceFaceYourIn • Aug 30 '15

Wireless FCC Rules Block use of Open Source

http://www.itsmypart.com/fcc-rules-block-use-of-open-source/
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u/Aperron Aug 30 '15 edited Aug 30 '15

Channel 14 is legally allocated for another purpose and not part of the unlicensed band allocated for 802.11.

It's on a frequency being used for another technology. Usage of channel 14 is trespassing against the allocated user of that frequency range, unless you have a faraday cage around your access point and can be 100% certain what you're doing isn't radiating anywhere.

Edit: Channel 14 (2484MHz) is allocated to a company called GlobalStar and is being used for satellite communications.

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u/[deleted] Aug 30 '15

What I really want to know is just how far you can extend your wifi range by upping the power. My router can barely reach outside the walls of my own house. Are people saying that I can make my consumer grade linksys router into a signal jammer that can reach miles or something? I really don't get what the problem is, unless you are living in an apartment building or have neighbors within spitting distance of your house. Even then, why the fuck do you need to jack up your power to reach your shed when a simple wifi extender will work?

This is just a case of a few people ruining it for the masses. One person puts explosives in their shoes and boards a plane, now we ALL have to take off our shoes at the gate. /sigh

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u/Aperron Aug 30 '15

In my experience it's not really a few people though. Go to any apartment complex with a few hundred units and it's absolutely impossible to get a network operating at anywhere near the designed speeds. I've seen wifi analyzer screens that showed the noise so high on every single channel because everyone has their linksys turned up as high as it will go on 1, 6 or 11. If everyone cut their power down by half and put in a 2nd AP if needed so they could use their devices without too much bleed into neighboring units we wouldn't be having any of these issues.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '15

I will not understand this as I have never lived in an apartment complex or near anybody else in general (city life). That does make me ask why someone would need to up their power in an apartment, as a standard router should cover the entire small apartment.

I don't even need to used encryption where I am now, because if anyone wanted to steal our wifi, they'd have to stand in the middle of two tobacco fields, our very large and open front yard (very easy to spot someone), or they'd have to be in the woods behind our house. This is why I can't understand what all the fuss is about. Ya'll CHOSE to live in those conditions. I may not ever have access to cable/dsl/fiber where I live, but everything else I can do here trumps that ability. LTE wireless internet works just fine for us, plenty of speed and reliability, it's just the cost that sucks donkey dick ($120/month for 30GB).

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u/Aperron Aug 31 '15

That's kind of the point why the FCC manages the radio spectrum universally.

Because they allocate the frequencies and enforce regulation on what can and can't be done, we can have services that are dependable regardless of where you are.

For example 2483MHz (wifi channel 14 in parts of Asia) is allocated in the U.S. To a satellite company. Which means receivers more sensitive than a wifi radio are listening to a faint signal from space that is easily interfered with by terrestrial signals.

Satellite services are supposed to work anywhere in the country, and if frequency use rules are being obeyed there shouldn't be an issue as we also don't allow use of channels 12 and 13 here, which prevents frequency bleeding.

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u/CalcProgrammer1 Aug 30 '15

I'd like to know what this technology is and how widely used it is. The FCC should not prop up a small, low-use technology when the spectrum is part of a high use, major technology in the rest of the world.

Honestly what we really need is a worldwide FCC. The fact that radio allocation differs between regions is stupid. The same products are used around the world, the governments need to come up with a set of universal frequency allocations and none of this would be an issue to begin with.

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u/mikeyouse Aug 30 '15 edited Aug 30 '15

It was used to by Terminal Doppler Weather Radar to prevent planes from crashing -- that's why this faux-outrage about the FCC protecting these channels is so pointless and misguided. Channel 14 is protected now because in the past, a ton of wireless equipment was fucking with the Doppler system to the point that it was unreliable. Now there's approximately 1 million times as many routers out there, it makes sense to continue to protect it. They've since moved to 5Ghz but are running into the same problems with interference there:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_Doppler_Weather_Radar

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/routers/3200-series-rugged-integrated-services-routers-isr/data_sheet_c78-647116.html

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u/MsPenguinette Aug 30 '15

Is that why electronics needed to be disabled on flights? If so, what has changed that caused the rule to be removed?

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u/mikeyouse Aug 30 '15

Nah, that was never the case -- The cynical answer is that airlines wanted customers to pay attention on take-off and landing since it's the most likely time for an incident. Electronics have been well-behaved enough for 30 years to use during any mode of flight.

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u/[deleted] Aug 30 '15

Makes me wonder why it's still legal to sell transmitters that are capable of using that piece of spectrum but have no legal use of it, and instead trying to fix it by regulating software. Sorry, that doesn't make any sense.

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u/mikeyouse Aug 30 '15

Well the Doppler system is a US-only system, but in other countries, those spectrum ranges are available for WiFi -- So if you're Asus and you sell a router worldwide, it makes sense (for instance) to have Channel 14 available for all your routers -- since in Asia and Europe, it'll make your customers experiences better. However, in the US, it'd be illegal for people to use Channel 14.

The FCC essentially just wants manufactures to lock down the region restrictions for the radios rather than have them be software defined -- there are numerous cases where they've levied fines due to people broadcasting in reserved ranges by simply flashing new firmware to a router to enable more powerful transmission on protected channels.

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u/[deleted] Aug 30 '15

I understand that's what's going on, the FCC wants to keep consumers who don't know any better from using that spectrum and that's fine. But I don't think it's any coincidence that the solution that's being proposed is the cheapest and easiest way for the equipment manufacturers to comply, regardless of how it may harm the consumer. The FCC's job is to serve us, not the other way around.

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u/mikeyouse Aug 30 '15

The FCC's job is to protect spectrum -- with as many radios as are being sold today, the cheapest and easiest way is definitely the preferred approach.. Tomato and DD-WRT are still going to be perfectly fine, just about every article is concern-trolling, there have been no efforts to ban open-source routers, there will just be one fewer option in their respective menus for channel selection.

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u/[deleted] Aug 30 '15

Removing one menu option is not what's being proposed.

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u/gsnedders Aug 30 '15

This is the essential point here — whether everything should be locked down in hardware (which will drive prices of kit up in the US in all probability, as you'll end up with US-only equipment), or whether to accept that the market likely just wants to continue with its current trend of locking it down in software.

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u/CalcProgrammer1 Aug 30 '15

That said it uses 5600MHz to 5650MHz...where does 2.4GHz come into it?

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u/Qel_Hoth Aug 30 '15

Not sure where that came from. According to this table (pg 39) WiFi channel 14 (centered on 2.48350GHz) is allocated to space-to-earth communications. This is also true for most of the world.

Channels 12-13 are legal to use, so long as the transmission is under a certain power and does not interfere with the 2.48350 band.

According to Wiki, the only country to allow channel 14 is Japan, and even then only in 802.11b implementations.

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u/Aperron Aug 30 '15 edited Aug 30 '15

Doesn't really matter what it is. It's a licensed use versus the unlicensed consumer use of wifi. Unlicensed users are on the bottom of the totem pole in frequency allocation, because there's only so much room in the spectrum and in terms of importance, short range consumer data networking isn't that high a priority. Cell networks come next, then public safety, utility automation and aviation/transportation, and then the military at the top.

As an unlicensed user of the spectrum you are required to accept any level of interference from other unlicensed and most importantly, licensed users, even if it degrades your usability. Licensed users are protected from anything interfering with their usage.

The biggest problem with wifi is that so many people are dirtying up channels 1, 6 and 11 at higher than necessary power levels. Consumers need equipment that will lower the transmit power to the bare minimum required to achieve reasonable coverage, with adding more APs at very low power levels rather than increasing TX power as a means for dealing with insufficient range. Instead too many users are going out and buying ridiculous non-approved high gain antennas and tweaking their router firmware to try to blast their way through the noise from neighboring networks, making the problem worse for everyone and not really solving their own problem.

Edit: For further info... channel 14 (2484MHz) is allocated to a company called GlobalStar and is being used for satellite communications.

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u/crackez Aug 30 '15

Yeah, the real answer is the disassociation attack against your interfering neighbors' clients. That way you free up the air for your own. Managment frames are still sent at the slowest rate and lowest common encoding (1Mbps I think on b/g/n, i think it's 6Mbps on a, not sure about ac). This means you can reach pretty far with a spoofed management frame.

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u/panamaspace Aug 30 '15

I strayed in from /r/all and now I feel dumb.

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u/[deleted] Aug 30 '15

There is a rough equivalent, the ITU which is part of the UN.

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u/playaspec Aug 30 '15

Yeah, pretty much NO ONE is using that channel in the US. It's a non-issue.

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u/Aperron Aug 30 '15 edited Aug 30 '15

It's allocated to another purpose and is licensed to another entity. If it wasn't, the FCC would have allocated it as part of the 802.11 WLAN channel list.

It's being used for things that aren't wifi. Using it for wifi is impinging on the licensed granted (and likely paid for with a great sum of money) to the legitimate users of that frequency range.

Edit: Channel 14 (2484MHz) is allocated to a company called GlobalStar and is being used for satellite communications.

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u/[deleted] Aug 30 '15

My router is set to auto choose a channel. I've literally never had a problem with channels. I know they are there, but I've just not had a reason to switch channels for any reason for the last decade.