This is basically a somewhat well-intentioned but ultimately very misguided way of shutting down open source wireless.
Possible interest for your ping lists...
The FCC intends to make the internet much more expensive to use. Look for users to be “certified” eventually.
I don't believe it's well-intentioned. It's meant to make sure the feral government has a back-door to EVERYTHING.
The lobbyists win again.
Those manufacturers want to dominate your machine and the marketplace, by removing your ability to tinker with it...
Well this SUX!
Other way round...every router or cable modem is built on open source code, much of it GNU. The EFF is a mess, but I don’t see good intentions here.
Government is afraid they won’t be able to snoop.
Computer operating systems are not the keys to the internet castle: router software is.
I’ve never really seen the necessity to change my router firmware, but if the DC goobers think they have the authority to tell me I can’t do what I will with hardware I purchased, then I feel obligated to do so.
I wonder how this will impact the use of SDR (software defined radio) gear.
It has become simple and cheap to dabble in radio using inexpensive SDR equipment. The cheapest units are receive only and don’t operate above 2Ghz but any hardware hacker worth his salt can whip up a transceiver solution for 2.5Ghz
There are SDR transceivers contained inside single SM chips.... used by various entities. :-)
Check out the SDR USB rx dongles on ebay.
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=sdr%20usb&clk_rvr_id=894226844698&mfe=search
The Chinese tried this with WAPI in 2004. It required major coordination with large corporations and USTR to push back on it. They blinked.
Now our “betters” want to do it here???
Get together a cheap ARM processor, a cheap SDR chip and perhaps a cheap FPGA along with several talented geeks and soon you would have an open-source router that would also operate as a useful SDR transceiver for 25Mhz - 3Ghz.
And if it was open-hardware as well then cheap Chinese clones would soon appear on ebay :-)
I know a few rf engineers that could do this...there probably are a few here among us on FR. I’m mostly software.. with a touch of hardware dabbler thrown in.
This has all become pretty routine and thus cheap. The el cheapo Ham Radio handie-talkies like the Baofeng are built upon a single SDR transceiver chip that costs less than a dollar...that chip can operate from the AM radio band to 1.4Ghz+ it can be coaxed to become many things..i.e. a simple GPS jammer can be built.
Fixed it for you. The open source community is primarily interested in retail routers and switches. I don't know of any open source community who, for instance, hacks commercial Cisco gear such as Catalyst switches.
While this is yet another infringement on our freedoms by an overbearing government agency, it doesn't signal the death of these efforts. As evidenced by everyday news, when someone or something tries to close a door, there are legions of techies who start pounding on that door to find a way in. The open source community won't die.