From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from bifrost.lang.hm (lang.hm [66.167.227.134]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by lists.bufferbloat.net (Postfix) with ESMTPS id B0BEC3B2BE; Mon, 14 Mar 2016 15:07:04 -0400 (EDT) Received: from asgard.lang.hm (asgard.lang.hm [10.0.0.100]) by bifrost.lang.hm (8.13.4/8.13.4/Debian-3) with ESMTP id u2EJ71qS005548; Mon, 14 Mar 2016 11:07:01 -0800 Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2016 12:07:01 -0700 (PDT) From: David Lang X-X-Sender: dlang@asgard.lang.hm To: Jonathan Morton cc: dpreed@reed.com, make-wifi-fast@lists.bufferbloat.net, bufferbloat-fcc-discuss , cerowrt-devel@lists.bufferbloat.net In-Reply-To: <7E8F9D99-38F8-47CD-960E-45100844B161@gmail.com> Message-ID: References: <1457964158.79616218@mobile.rackspace.com> <7E8F9D99-38F8-47CD-960E-45100844B161@gmail.com> User-Agent: Alpine 2.02 (DEB 1266 2009-07-14) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Subject: Re: [Cerowrt-devel] [Make-wifi-fast] [bufferbloat-fcc-discuss] arstechnica confirmstp-link router lockdown X-BeenThere: cerowrt-devel@lists.bufferbloat.net X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.20 Precedence: list List-Id: Development issues regarding the cerowrt test router project List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2016 19:07:05 -0000 On Mon, 14 Mar 2016, Jonathan Morton wrote: >> On 14 Mar, 2016, at 16:02, dpreed@reed.com wrote: >> >> The WiFi protocols themselves are not a worry of the FCC at all. Modifying >> them in software is ok. Just the physical emissions spectrum must be >> certified not to be exceeded. >> >> So as a practical matter, one could even satisfy this rule with an external >> filter and power limiter alone, except in part of the 5 GHz band where radios >> must turn off if a radar is detected by a specified algorithm. >> >> That means that the radio software itself could be tasked with a software >> filter in the D/A converter that is burned into the chip, and not bypassable. >> If the update path requires a key that is secret, that should be enough, as >> key based updating is fine for all radios sold for other uses that use >> digital modulation using DSP. >> >> So the problem is that 802.11 chips don't split out the two functions, making >> one hard to update. > > To put this another way, what we need is a cleaner separation of ISO Layers 1 > (physical) and 2 (MAC). The problem is that everything (not just in wifi chips, think about 'software defined networking/datacenter) is moving towards less separation of the different layers, not more. The benefits of less separation are far more flexibility, lower costs, and in some cases, the ability to do things that weren't possible with the separation. Any position that requires bucking this trend is going to have a very hard time surviving. David Lang