On Wed, Jun 11, 2003 at 10:07:08AM -0700, Ken Restivo wrote: > But this justification for keeping the code closed sets my bullshit > detectors to ringing. Anyone could, with the purchase of an oscillator > (or even just a Schmitt trigger doubled-back on itself) and a few > other very cheap, common chips, and expense of maybe $5, quickly > produce a transmitter that would generate huge swaths of nasty, illegal > interference, on bands limited only by the experimenter's ingenuity, > or at least with harmonics that thrash bands up in the microwaves. It's > not expensive, I can't see it requiring very much skill (*avoiding* > interference requires skill, not generating it ;-) and... why aren't the > manufacturers of all basic 74-series IC's, for example, under similar > "FCC regulation" to keep their products under strict control to only > licensed hardware/software developers? It's a reductio ad absurdum, > perhaps, but I think it still begs asking.
It is true that a malicious person with some hardware talent could build a very good interference-maker, but I don't think that this concerns the FCC as much as protecting innocent users from inadvertently being pests. Just for one example of an innocent misuse of spectrum, a free OS that shall go nameless has an ill-considered and broken feature for turning your Prism radio "up to eleven," which increases interference on the channel you have tuned and on adjacent ones. This is pretty bad, but it does not justify Intersil in providing a feature-poor interface to the radio. Instead, they could have provided a way to control the power in a way that you cannot break regulations. The FCC will meet its mandate better, and facilitate radio innovation, by guiding radio makers to *enrich* their APIs, instead of shipping thick binary-only firmwares that scarcely expose any radio parameters. If Intersil ditched the heavyweight Prism firmware and shipped a shim between radio and host whose *only* responsibility was to ensure that the host's choice of channel and power level met regulations, then that would enable 802.11 innovations, such as per-packet Tx power control, which increase frequency re-use. Dave -- David Young OJC Technologies [EMAIL PROTECTED] Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933 -- general wireless list, a bawug thing <http://www.bawug.org/> [un]subscribe: http://lists.bawug.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless
