Comment by dogma1138 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dogma1138 | Hacker News Reader

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Asshats brought it on themselves, don't commit felonies and mess with regulatory bodies... There is no reason in the world to run Wifi on outlawed channels other than pure selfishness to have a better connection and not be on the same base band or expansion bands as your neighbors. The FCC even allowed people to run low power transmitters on the restricted channels 12/13 but stated that channel 14 is banned and asked nicely for people not to dick around with it.[1] https://transition.fcc.gov/oet/ea/presentations/files/oct05/...

Now it doesn't matter why is that channel blocked, it's not a licensed channel in many countries (as they are used for air traffic landing assist systems, radars, medical equipment such as panic buttons for elderly and disabled people, alarms etc...) and it seems like it is causing interference other wise the FCC would not be chasing this issue again after relaxing the regulations for restricted channels and asking the users to behave.

It's a felony to tweak your Wifi beyond specs, it causes issues and regulatory bodies react, OpenWRT and DD-WRT could've saved them selves the trouble by developing a mechanism to respect local regulation own their own.

Also as it seems people panic too quickly what will happen is the same thing with the radio's on mobile SOC's each region will have it's own channels enabled, you'll still be able to use DD-WRT or w/e you want in the end you won't be able to play with the Wifi settings out of spec which there's no reason in the world for you to be able to in the 1st place.

> It's a felony to tweak your Wifi beyond specs, it causes issues and regulatory bodies react, OpenWRT and DD-WRT could've saved them selves the trouble by developing a mechanism to respect local regulation own their own.

The Linux kernel has such mechanisms and they're not trivial to bypass. You'd as a user have to go out of your way to do so, and the devs are not in favour of users doing this. (source: I had to do so to workaround a card that was configured for completely the wrong regulatory domain).

> Asshats brought it on themselves

I've been using Tomato firmware for years, and I never did anything illegal with it. How did I bring it on myself exactly?

> you'll still be able to use DD-WRT or w/e you want

RTFA: Vendors will have to “describe in detail how the device is protected from “flashing” and the installation of third-party firmware such as DD-WRT”

As far as I know, all of the issues at hand could be solved with baked-in hardware lockouts without otherwise affecting custom firmware, but that's not what the FCC is demanding.

Have you read it?

GP1: "Describe all the radio frequency parameters that are modified by any software/firmware without any hardware changes. Are these parameters in some way limited, such that, it will not exceed the authorized parameters?"

3dP1: "Explain if any third parties have the capability to operate a US sold device on any other regulatory domain, frequencies, or in any manner that is in violation of the certification"

3dP2: "What prevents third parties from loading non-US versions of the software/firmware on the device? Describe in detail how the device is protected from “flashing” and the installation of third-party firmware such as DD-WRT."

They don't care that people can install DD-WRT because of DD-WRT they care about it because it bypasses vendor restrictions if DD-WRT comes up with a way to comply with the regulatory domain, or if the vendor explains that DD-WRT will not be able to modify the Wireless Parameters out of the spec of the US regulatory domain due to limitations on the radio SOC it self they won't care if you can install DD-WRT.

Yes, I appreciate that the FCC's proposal imposes the fewest possible restrictions, but you'd be crazy to think that it will work this way in practice. It's far easier to comply with FCC regulations by preventing any modifications whatsoever than to lock down the specific modules.

Really depends on how the open firmware community decides to handle this, if they'll put their heads in the sand and say well FCC are bad and write to your representatives nothing will come out of it. If they work out a framework to prevent misuse of regulated equipment there's a good chance that thats what we'll see implemented.

And locking out the firmware might not be the easiest way to handle this if you are a manufacturer since you'll still need to provide updates and multiple software versions (even basic things like ISP branding), so you'll have to resort to using cryptography building in a secure boot/secure flash mechanism and such and such which isn't cheap to maintain, for you telling broadcom to just disable Channel X Y and Z in their radio might be a cheaper and easier option.

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