[Cialug] FCC to Make DD-WRT on 5GHz Wireless Routers Illegal?

[Scott Yates]

Mediacom downgraded the firmware on the Cisco wireless routers they use,
and locked their customers out of wifi.  They then turned around and
decided to charge customers monthly to allow them to use wifi.  Complete
and total asshat move.

What made matters even MORE annoying is that they did the same thing to the
router I OWNED.  They got an ear-full over that stunt.

After they corrected their mistake on my personal router, I was still
annoyed (once bitten and all that) so I went and got a Motorola dumb modem
and bridged it into a pfsense machine for all my routing.


On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 9:58 AM, jim kraai <jimgkraai at gmail.com> wrote:

> unfamiliar w/ the mediacom's whole home wireless.
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 9:18 AM, Barry Von Ahsen <vonahsen at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > you mean like mediacom's whole home wireless?
> >
> >
> > -barry
> >
> >
> >
> > > On Sep 4, 2015, at 6:35 AM, jim kraai <jimgkraai at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Maybe the companies sees what the auto and heavy equipment industries
> are
> > > doing and recognized a chance to turn a one-time router purchase into a
> > > long-term router subscription and asked people in the FCC to create
> these
> > > rules for that purpose.
> > >
> > >
> > > On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 8:14 AM, Matt <matt at itwannabe.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >> Of course the FCC isn't TRYING to ban DD-WRT, OpenWRT, or other open
> > >> source firmwares.  They just don't understand that it is a trillion
> > times
> > >> easier for a company to sign the whole firmware with a 4096-bit
> private
> > key
> > >> than it is to separate the chunk of code that runs the radios and only
> > sign
> > >> it.  It's also cheaper for the company to utilize SDRs than it is to
> > >> develop and ASIC with the functionality of the radios baked in, and
> > even if
> > >> it wasn't that would prevent the company from ever upgrading the
> radios
> > >> should a bug of some sort be found after production began.
> > >>
> > >> What will end up happening is the FCC will put out some
> > >> poorly/loosely-worded regulation that the industry will panic about,
> and
> > >> everything from the router firmware all the way down to the flashing
> of
> > the
> > >> wifi activity LED will be buried under ninety tons of DRM/encryption.
> > >> Everyone who wants a guest network or any other neat feature from
> their
> > >> next router will end up having to either buy a $350 top of the line
> > router,
> > >> get a new/used/refurbished enterprise (Cisco, anyone?) router, or
> build
> > a
> > >> custom router using an old PC and a WiFi card just to get that one
> > feature
> > >> they need.  All this while everyone else ends up having to go back to
> > their
> > >> crappy original firmware with a terrible feature set, clunky web
> > interface,
> > >> and awful network monitoring capabilities (if any at all) when they
> > decide
> > >> to upgrade.
> > >>
> > >> -- Matt (N0BOX)
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> On 9/3/2015 11:21 PM, Scott Yates wrote:
> > >>
> > >>> Not so much maybe:
> > >>>
> > >>>
> >
> https://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20150831/07164532118/no-fcc-is-not-intentionally-trying-to-kill-third-party-wi-fi-router-firmware.shtml
> > >>>
> > >>> On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 10:19 PM, jim kraai <jimgkraai at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > >>>
> > >>> What?
> > >>>>
> > >>>>
> >
> http://hackaday.com/2015/09/02/save-wifi-act-now-to-save-wifi-from-the-fcc/
> > >>>> _______________________________________________
> > >>>> Cialug mailing list
> > >>>> Cialug at cialug.org
> > >>>> http://cialug.org/mailman/listinfo/cialug
> > >>>>
> > >>>> _______________________________________________
> > >>> Cialug mailing list
> > >>> Cialug at cialug.org
> > >>> http://cialug.org/mailman/listinfo/cialug
> > >>>
> > >>
> > >> _______________________________________________
> > >> Cialug mailing list
> > >> Cialug at cialug.org
> > >> http://cialug.org/mailman/listinfo/cialug
> > >>
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Cialug mailing list
> > > Cialug at cialug.org
> > > http://cialug.org/mailman/listinfo/cialug
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Cialug mailing list
> > Cialug at cialug.org
> > http://cialug.org/mailman/listinfo/cialug
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Cialug mailing list
> Cialug at cialug.org
> http://cialug.org/mailman/listinfo/cialug
>