DOD vs. 802.11b

goombah99 writes "The NY times (reg required) reports that "The Defense Department, arguing that an increasingly popular form of wireless Internet access could interfere with military radar, is seeking new limits on the technology". It would seem they have a good point; radar is an essential for both defense and civilian aviation as well as ship navigation in tight quarters. Critics of the restrictions contend technology can limit the interference, but what proof is there to these assertions? Sure we all want wireless internet but maybe there should be more careful review of its consequences."

Comments

Won't someone think about the Whales?

[Flamesplash]

Apparantly this only works one way. There have been a lot of articles out lately about Navy sonar and other artificially generated waves interfering with Whale communications.

I wonder what they would do if the Whales went and destroyed facilities developing the devices that mess with them. Now if only they could get them to do the main development on ships, then the time of the Whale will come upon us. MWUAHAHAHAHA

This is about 5Ghz technology

[goombah99]

Despite the misleading headline inserted by slashdot editors, the article refers to an"increasingly popular" wireless technology in the 5Ghz band.

The pentagon is not trying to poop on the wifi party. And they are not out to supress info transfers. They just want to make sure that a stupid irrversible giveaway of the wrong band does not take place. Apparently a lot of next generation radars need this band and depend upon a noise free environement. for example the article notes weather radar. Believe me getting a radar return of gas is very very difficult. Even high power radars are not the whole answer--the return signals are weak and fall off 1/r^2 limiting the range.

My fear is that the bush admin will give way to the coroprate interests. Microsoft is one of them mentioned in the article. these companies have dumped tons of money into campaign contributions. And the easy thing for the bush admin to do is to do nothing at all.

regardless of your misgivings about the department of defenses other activities, having good radar is a swell idea that we all can benenefit from.

presumably there might be some techno fix that could make all happy. But remember these radar systems take years to design. Its not just about making the latest up-to-date technology but also about quality assurance, standards and interoperability. So just saying they could be redesigned is not a valid response. You dont retrofit safety systems on a whim because some thinks they can make it better. Murphy's law will get you. And its often better to have standardized less than state of the art systems people know the limitiations of than a myriad of superior technologies they dont know the relaibaility of.

Re:This is about 5Ghz technology

[archeopterix]

Shouldn't it show the DoD that they should start work, today, on the next-next generation of radar, which won't be able to be foiled by a bunch of high-power 5 ghz transmission devices, the basic parts for which might soon become available from civilian outlets over the Internet.

It's not that easy to jam a radar. Bats are a living proof of this. Thousands of them can navigate in dark caves without jamming each other. Radars are designed to avoid jamming - they use quite a wide spectrum of radio waves that changes dynamically (bats do that too, only with sound waves). Of course it is probably possible to build a jamming system, but such a system would involve many high-powered transmitters and thus would be very costly. I guess that widespread use of radar-frequency Wi-Fi would just slightly degrade military radar performance (perhaps civilian aviation radars would suffer more) and that's what the military are concerned about. I would be more concerned about a kilowatt radar signal damaging Wi-Fi equipment though.

Re:Other problems as well

[aborchers]

Interference of cell phones with avionics is a red herring. The real problem with using cell phones on airplanes is that at high altitude and speed, a cell phone hops towers too frequently.

The case for avionics interference is actually quite weak, from all reports I've heard. The policy for cell use on aircraft is partly CYA, partly greed (use our in-flight phone instead) and partly a cookie to the cell industry, which cannot or does not want to deal with the hassles of supporting high-speed tower-hopping on their networks...

The wrong target?

[bald_spot]

According to This article, The most important source of interference in the band is commercial microwave ovens, of which there are over 100 million in use in the US alone.

Yeah riiiight

[phr2]

Free wifi is going to interfere with military radar, but I bet when some big-money corporate interest group wants those same frequencies, they will get them with no radar objections being raised. We don't hear about UHF television interfering with radar either, or 1.8 ghz cell phones, etc. This is just another scam on the goverment's part to interfere with private communications.

Re:fear mongering

[corebreech]

Fear mongering? No current examples of interference???

No current examples of interference are possible, since our military appears to be completely incompetent!

Consider 9/11. At approximately the same time the first airliner struck the World Trade Center, the flight that was to hit the Pentagon went NORDO, i.e., was identified as a hijacked aircraft. This thing was tracked on radar for FIFTY FUCKING MINUTES before crashing into THE FUCKING PENTAGON of all places and the fine men and women charged with protecting our airspace DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO PREVENT IT!

It takes big balls on their part to now say that we can't do any further development on WiFi because it will impair the military use of radar. I fail to see how military radar can be rendered any more ineffective.

Yep, that's the obvious point.

[twitter]

Killing the utility of 802.11 in the US won't keep others from expoiting our problems. It will simply keep us from having better, lower cost communications. I posted this making fun of DoD in another thread.

Re:This is still about fighting "terrorists"

[Catbeller]

Osama bin Laden does not use beepers, landlines, telephones, cell phones, WiFi, the Internet, laser comm, satellite phones, carrier pigeons, or the U.S. mail.

He communicates via trusted lieutenants, face to face.

The idea of terrorists using the Internet and WiFi in particular is not only speculative, it's just plain wrong. A professional guerilla warrior does not use traceable tech, not if they want to succeed.

This is FUD. And a prelude to a marketing campaign against free networks. Or, it just illustrates the really bad thinking coming from the White House's Nixon retreads right now -- not Bush. Bush doesn't know WiFi from HiFi. This is coming from the army of Marching Morons that are running the Executive Branch and the DoD right now, to the dismay of the intelligent professionals who have been shoved aside and told to shut up.

How about UWB 802.11?

[JohnnyCannuk]

Sounds like a good time to switch to/invest in a new 802.11x ultra-wide-band solution.

UWB, as I understand it, sends out nano-second pulses over a wide band of frequencies. These pulses sound like regular "noise" if they are detectable at all. Best part they don't interfere with existing signals on any particular frequency. They can be used for communications or specialized radar (ground penetrating, seeing through walls to find people etc).

So either your DOD swithces it's radar or gets your FCc to allow higher power UWB (currently the range is limited to about 10 meters...great for a UWB mesh network ;) )

Anyway, I may not be the most knowledgable in the field, so someone ca correct me but this sounds like a great opportunity to make a better more decentralized technology take hold

How many times do I have to say this...?

[cr0sh]

I have read many of the comments made on this topice here in this forum. I understand that there seems to be a confusion as to whether this issue is related to 802.11a or 802.11b. Frankly, I don't think it matters.

The fact is, 802.11x communication systems ARE REGULATED BY THE FCC. If they chose (or were ordered), they could easily deem the spectrum used by 802.11x to be off-limits to anyone! Sure, I have heard the comments like "but businesses have invested millions in 802.11 - they would howl" - perhaps they might. Or perhaps a transition would occur to make the larger companies happy, by providing some form of wireless that isn't available to the average consumer like 802.11x is - but still gives those communications companies a foothold in wireless comms, while making consumers happy, and also possibly providing an easy place for the feds to tap, while making community nets a thing of the past (think it impossible? Try to buy, as a consumer, your own TXRX system for a cell phone - good luck, if you can even afford it). Everyone (mostly) wins - except for the citizen, ne - consumer...

I have said many times that the government has this (unelected, unrepresented) power via the FCC to do this (think I am joking? Do a search on my past comments, if you don't believe me). In these same comments, I have presented a solution that very few have worked on (at least on the homebrew front), that could keep community networks alive, a solution the government (FCC) cannot regulate (but oh how they would try - and if they succeeded, well - then that is the cue for true revolution):

Laser/LEDComm

I daresay RONJA is probably the most advanced "homebrew" system out there (if anyone has links to more advanced stuff - such as on the order of homebrew sighting/retargeting systems like AirFiber's System - please post links!). Other links of interest:

http://www.alphalink.com.au/~derekw/upn tcvr.htm

http://www.hut.fi/Misc/Electronics/circu its/laserlink.html

http://www.geocities.com/Silic onValley/Lakes/7156/laser.htm

http://www.n1bug.ne t/tech/laser/laserfr.html

http://www.n1bug.net/te ch/laser/alc_wa6ejo.html

http://www.repairfaq.org /sam/lasersam.htm

http://www.qsl.net/w1vlf/techin fo/optical_transmitters.html

http://misty.com/peo ple/don/laserdon.html

So - these systems have problems (line of sight being the largest) - but all systems have problems. At least one company (AirFiber) is using similar tech to run a business for WAN layouts - so it should be possible for a homebrew solution to be worked out. Are we going to simply wait until 802.11x really gets "outlawed" before we do something? What kind of shit is that?

Oh - wait - this is /. - where apathy seems to almost be the rule when it comes to politics...