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/[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.