back to article Imagination: Come back to MIPS, Wi-Fi router makers, we have an FCC ban workaround

A fairly straightforward idea by Imagination Technologies could rescue American geeks' ability to run Openwrt on their routers. The freedom to tinker with Wi-Fi routers has been a hot topic ever since the Federal Communications Commission issued an edict that devices be locked down to protect America's spectrum. Its concern …

  1. asdf

    mips still going strong

    Remember how Itanium killed MIPS? The day the last Itanium chip is made (coming soon I assume) I wonder how many millions (or at least hundreds of thousands) of MIPS chips will also be fabbed worldwide.

    1. phuzz Silver badge
      WTF?

      Re: mips still going strong

      Wait, Itanium is still alive?

      * checks online

      Bloody hell, you can still buy a machine with an Itanium inside (only from HP though)!

      Who's still buying these?

      1. asdf

        Re: mips still going strong

        >Who's still buying these?

        Anybody that has HP-UX production environments. Real shame it (Itanium not so much) along with its real UNIX brothers is dying. Meanwhile Red Hat's new POSIX standard well lets just say I'm not a big fan.

  2. Uberseehandel

    5 GHz is much more complicated that most folk realise

    The 5GHz band is coming under pressure from new users (vehicles amongst others) and existing co-users of the band.

    As a result the spectrum available for IEEE 802.11ac is likely to get more fractionated. So that 40 GHz and 80 GHz wide channels are going to made up of several non-contiguous channels in the future. Contiguous 80 MHz wide channels will cease being available.

    The standards bodies and regulators are working towards having 802.11ac wireless access points operated entirely autonomously, even being fitted with GPS capability to ensure compliance with local regulations.

    There are well developed plans to ensure that adjoining access points cooperate with each other in order to optimise overall usage of the available spectrum.

    Based on my experience to date, Wi-Fi enthusiasts rarely pay much heed to regulators or the needs of other users. Even though some of the existing channels use the same portion of the spectrum as older Doppler radars used generally for weather warnings and most particularly for identifying wind shear conditions. Ignorance of wind shear can, and has, caused serious aviation fatalities.

    On balance, there are strong arguments for not letting hobbyists interfere with the manner in which their Wi-Fi devices operate.

    1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      Re: 5 GHz is much more complicated that most folk realise

      Did they hook you up directly to a PR generator via a fiber-to-brain connection or something? That would explain why you are spouting rubbish too.

      The specific issue with weather radars, 5GHz band and the FCC in the USA is because USA has an ungodly amount of those.

      European countries have on average 3-5 installations per large country, one per small one which are predominantly designed to serve aviation. These are backed up by roughly the same number of military ones and a very small number of dedicated installations serving the missile launchers used for hail dispersal in agricultural protection in high hail incidence areas (Hungarian Pusta, Bulgarian Trakia valley, Danube plains in Romania, etc). The latter are being phased out nowdays to be served via "radar data as a service" from the main stations.

      USA is nothing like that. In the 1980-es as part of the Star War era militarization madness USA developed an idiot friendly weather radar to be operated by the national guard in its civil defense role for tornado warnings. As any Doppler radar it is obviously double purpose (it all depends on what software you load into the DSPs), but officially it is for weather. I evaluated that POS as a side job in the 1990es on a contract to support a tender for a new radar in one of the European countries. It was hideous - very wide beam, no ability to see raw data, virtually no ability to do anything. Its only redeeming feature was that it could be operated by a grunt in uniform with the educational level of a grunt. The wide beam was the obvious dual use give away. Clouds do not move a lot, you would like a narrow beam to inspect it properly and hit it from up to 300 km away. Planes and warheads - not so much, you want a wide beam otherwise you lose it.

      These (and their descendants) are deployed in ridiculous quantities across the midwest (less than every 100 miles). They are everywhere. That is in addition to proper radar installations operated by the USAF and airports. This makes for an extremely crowded 5GHz band and ridiculous interference issues in that band.

      First of all, it is not aviation at stake. The bulk are not used for aviation. They are civil defense installations to deal with the very USA specific Mid-West tornado problem. They were originally intended as double-use and this is why they are not operated by civilians. They _CAN_ be replaced by a smaller number of proper radars, however that means a massive pork reduction so not likely.

      Second, this is a USA specific problem. In the rest of the world the problem does not exist. You need to enforce a couple of miles of exclusion zone in 5GHz band around less than 5 installations per country. You might as well put those somewhere where the exclusion zone is easier to enforce (and they have a better "view").

      So pulling the "aviation" argument, etc, especially in the FCC being a control freak context is frankly lying with a straight face. This has little to do with aviation. It has to do with politics. It will take a political decision to take the toys from the national guard, replace them with proper correctly spaced long range radar installations outside cities and put local exclusion zones around them. That is not happening, so various strawman arguments are used instead.

      1. Uberseehandel

        Re: 5 GHz is much more complicated that most folk realise

        Your knowledge is theoretical rather than practical.

        In practice, we are regularly seeing that Wi-Fi access points close to the Polderbaan runway at Schiphol change frequencies whenever conditions determine that the various aviation landing assistance equipment is activated. I haven't tested close to other major airports.

        However, the European regulators implemented DFS/TPC/CAC in Europe, which suggests that you have been misinformed to some extent.

        There are in Europe a small number of older commercial aircraft that still operate c-band weather radar.

        1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

          Re: 5 GHz is much more complicated that most folk realise

          Your knowledge is theoretical rather than practical.

          The C-band doppler radar is in on the right, next to what used to be the crop duster hangar and is now an old aircraft graveyard: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Sofia-airport-morning.jpg

          When it was installed there there was LOTS of penny-pinching bitching all around because that necessitated a new fiber optic run around the airport. However, the decision was right - it has a natural 2 miles exclusion zone around it as a result. With its 1kW max beam power I would be interested in exactly what AP will affect it.

          I can go around the major airports (and hail control sites) in Europe and rub your nose into other actual C-band installs. I used to know quite a few of them from the days when I actually had some involvement with evaluating such kit.

          This is one I is off the top of my head as it is clearly visible on the wikipedia picture and well known and was put in place with some brains in use too so it is not affected by interference. For the others I need to dig GoogleEarth which I really cannot be a**ed.

          By the way, what you are describing is APs switching _AWAY_ after being whacked by the radar beam going _LOW_ to very low inclination to provide data for the "guidance systems". It is not the "guidance systems being turned on". So I suggest you improve your "theoretical knowledge" by reading the spec of an actual C-band radar. These have strict operational exclusions on where the antenna is pointed at what time for a reason (That also minimizes the way they are affected by interference too by the way). 1Kw 1 degree narrow beam (that is the actual max power spec of MRL, Gematronic, Siemens, Ericsson - all but the American models) is not something you would like to point anywhere near a populated area unless you really really need it - f.e. to feed the automated landing kit with some data. Which is what you saw.

          1. Uberseehandel

            Re: 5 GHz is much more complicated that most folk realise

            How the systems at the airport operate is interesting, but immaterial. The effect is that in poor weather conditions, the access points switch channels, and in clear weather conditions, they don't switch channels.

            Your attitude stinks, why would you want to rub anybody's nose in a radar installation.

            Now you are just arguing for the sake of it. Padding it out with boilerplate about radar system operation is pointless.

  3. Warm Braw

    Not just "American geeks"

    Manufacturers aren't going to produce locked-down devices specifically for the US market - not enough people load their own software to make it worth having a separate version for the rest of the world.

    1. Uberseehandel

      Re: Not just "American geeks"

      Well, one of the leading Wi-Fi access point manufacturers, by volume of units shipped, had its European DFS/TPC/CAC compliant versions available and shipped prior to the US versions.

      It isn't very difficult, the configuration is parameter driven, at some stage in the future, autonomous Wi-Fi access points will consult a remote database to update their configuration parameters.

      It doesn't matter what the manufacturers want, what matters is what the regulators want.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Not just "American geeks"

        "It doesn't matter what the manufacturers want, what matters is what the regulators want."

        And what do the customers want? An access point that reports back its location to some central surveillance system?

        1. Uberseehandel

          Re: Not just "American geeks"

          5 GHz Wi-Fi has to co-exist with other users of the same portion of the spectrum. What Wi-Fi users want is exclusive access to the spectrum, which is not going to happen. Not only do other co-users need more of the spectrum, but part of the spectrum currently being shared by Wi-Fi users is being allocated for other purposes, which had not existed until recently.

          Wi-Fi customers want functioning, fast Wi-Fi. Which is why Wi-Gig has been introduced. The regulators have decided that the future of 802.11ac Wi-Fi usage is to become more fractionated, and that the access points should interact with other access points to maximise overall throughput and usage. In order to do this, configuration of 802.11ac will become progressively more autonomous.

          Unfortunately, the regulators have the final word in this matter. Anybody having issues with autonomous Wi-Fi access point configuration should probably look to switching to Wi-Gig at the earliest opportunity.

          Although Wi-Gig has plenty of bandwidth and is fast, it is very short range, which introduces other problems. There may be sufficient bandwidth to build mesh networks that do not suffer performance degradation, but until such units become available we will not know how feasible this is.

      2. Warm Braw

        Re: Not just "American geeks"

        Sorry, perhaps I wasn't clear. What I meant was that if the US wants locked-down firmware, everyone will get locked-down firmware because the market demand for hackable devices is negligible,

  4. Chronos

    Who visors the hypervisor?

    One of the reasons many of us run things like OpenWRT is security and the ability to roll updates when vulnerabilities are found. Given the industry's track record in this area, I remain unconvinced that this addresses the issue in any meaningful way. If your custom firmware is running under something which has ultimate control, privacy and security go out of the window if that layer is riddled with bugs. Looking around at some of the commercial offerings thus far, it's a safe bet it will be.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon