[Bloat] RE : Save WiFi from the FCC - DEADLINE is in 3 days *September* 8

[Dave Taht]

On Tue, Sep 8, 2015 at 1:55 AM, Mikael Abrahamsson <swmike at swm.pp.se> wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Sep 2015, Dave Taht wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Sep 8, 2015 at 1:22 AM, Mikael Abrahamsson <swmike at swm.pp.se>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Tue, 8 Sep 2015, Dave Taht wrote:
>>>
>>>> wifi, and the carriers... which bugs me. 5.x ghz is the people's
>>>> spectrum, that we should be free to use any way we want... and to make
>>
>>
>> Please note that the LTE-U debate is separate from the lockdown
>> debate, which only has a day to run. Can we get more letters into the
>> FCC for the lockdown problem?
>
>
> I have already posted as well.
>
>> And jeeze, what makes sense - on the "licensed" spectrum - is the
>> government auctions it off for big bucks one year, and then the public pays
>> rents on it for all eternity. Far saner to have more openly available
>> spectrum
>
>
> Well, yes, we need both unlicensed and licensed spectrum.

Well, no... we need the concept of "the public's" spectrum, also.

>> One failed concept in america, at least, is the idea of a commons - as in
>> a tragedy of the commons - elsewhere, for example, "public lands" are
>> actually "the queen's" lands and people tend to treat them with more
>> respect.
>
>
> Yes, in sweden we have something called (translated) "Rights of public
> access" to land for instance, I'm allowed to go camping in someone elses
> forest as long as it's noncommercial and I leave it as I found it.

What is the word, actually?

> It's a
> constant battle to keep this freedom and I agree we need this for radio as
> well. BUT it's not like unlicensed radio today means you can do whatever you
> want, there is still quite a lot of regulation around it. So I can
> understand if they want to achieve that regulated devices in unlicensed
> spectrum actually follows the regulation. The problem is that it's different
> across the world, I've heard that in Thailand for instance, you're only
> allowed to transmit with a total of 100mW from a device, so if you turn on
> both 2.4GHz and 5GHz radios, you need to limit them to 50mW each (or some
> combination). How would a completely open device solve this problem?

The best approach that we can think of to ensuring regulatory
compliance throughout the globe, in linux, has long been:

https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/developers/regulatory

and making it all available as open source code, as we do.

The only way it could be improved would be for devices to also try to
determine where they actually are on boot, and to mandate that all
device makers seeking FCC compliance publish their source code that
shows it making the appopropriate calls into that database - and the
FCC mandate regular updates, and so on.

I of course would go a step further and mandate all wifi drivers and
firmware be made available as open source code in publicly available
git repositories - wifi has FAR more problems than just potentially
emitting on the wrong bands or at the wrong power, and I would hope
the FCC wold recognize that making wifi better, for everyone, should
also be a goal, rather than just protecting their radards.

I keep seeing things on how LTE-U is "1.6 times better than wifi" -
which does not use a definition of "better" I agree with...

... and we've already outlined how we intend to improve wifi's
behavior by much more than that - by reducing power, improving spacial
reuse, and improving aggregation, and so on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vWrFCZXOWk

> So I think a constructive approach would be to try to say how the FCC
> concern can be solved or at least mitigated in a FOSS world. Do we have any
> ideas?

I am trying - and failing - to write a letter today on that.

> Because I can understand that regulators whose job it is to make sure
> devices follow the rules have a problem with FOSS code that lets people do
> whatever they want.
>
> Do we really want for regulators to bring back the vans who might roll
> around and impose a fine because you were running OpenWRT and happened to
> set the output power too high for whatever local regulation was in place?

Well, pushing the responsibility back on the actual users of the
technology is fine by me. Enforcement seems only to be of a concern on
the DFS channels around a limited number of airports.

>
>
> --
> Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike at swm.pp.se



-- 
Dave Täht
endo is a terrible disease: http://www.gofundme.com/SummerVsEndo