[Make-wifi-fast] [bufferbloat-fcc-discuss] arstechnica confirms tp-link router lockdown

[Brandon Butterworth]

On Sat, 13 Mar 2016, David lang wrote:
> I would do us no good to create a fully open chip if the FCC mandates
> that the firmware must be locked down.

Which firmware must be locked down? I was under the impression that is
just retail end user devices, is the suggestion that chip manufacturers
will not be allowed to sell parts to people who might make a non locked
down device? Does that include if they don't supply firmware and the
user writes their own/reverse engineers others? Sounds like a road to
future regulating all rf hardware sale (stop people selling rp
connectors as it's letting them circumvent the antenna limitations they
were designed to impose?)

Given the interference that caused this is a few incidents a year
compared to the millions of units sold and that those cases were
either bad users or caused by faulty devices it seems that the
lock down would have to be total to prevent future incidents. Quite
impractical.

> Would I like someone to do this, Sure. I'll contribute towards a
> kickstarter, even if it's $100 for a mini-pci card that is the
> equivalent of what we can get today for $30, but it would take
> tens of thousands of people doing that to fund the project, and
> I have serious doubts if you can get that much funding for 
> something with such a long lead time.

It think it would be cheaper and quicker to reverse engineer drivers
for others hardware. Even if the cost could be covered to build it'd
lag commercial products by years making it a difficult sell, and likely
subjected to IPR claims from current manufacturers

> If someone does the research and puts together a FPGA version

That could be an interesting project. It may not help but we have
an FPGA MIMO implementation we may be able to release to such a
project (it may be unsuitable though, we've been making radio cameras
https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=bbc+r%26d+mimo
https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=bbc+r%26d+halfrf )

> and is looking for funding to convert it to a ASIC, I think you
> could get funding. But that's not the question in front of us now.

Yes, and if the lock down expands to chips too would have
the same problem

brandon