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Pentagon and Wi-Fi Deal Reached
byteCoder writes "CNet reports that the US Military and the Wi-Fi manufacturers have struck an agreement on reducing the interference on military radars by Wi-Fi equipment. Basically, future wireless equipment will detect the presence of military radar and not transmit over the top of it. Additionally, as part of the compromise, defense officials will endorse the doubling of the number of allowed wireless frequencies--thus opening more spectrum to wireless users (as long as the FCC and Congress agree)."
This is a great example of a win-win scenario. Seems perfectly reasonable to me and the results can benefit everyone. More frequencies, more channels, easier to cover a building, etc...
What a novel idea.
Will WiFi equipment be able to tell the difference between military radar, police department radar, and other forms of non-WiFi radiation in the relevant frequency ranges? Will WiFi stop working if I wardrive near a police car? Will it stop working if a police car drives by my house?
Does this "agreement" allow anyone who wants to suppress the use of WiFi to turn on a device that simulates 'military radar"?
Just wondering.
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I guess this means the military won't be using 802.11 anytime soon... It would be a little tough for them to use it if their own radars keep turning it off!
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Saddam: "I wonder how close those Americans are... I know, break out the access points!"
Isn't that a little dangerous for military secrecy? I mean, anyone can now take a wireless transmitter and modify it to detect military radar. As technology grows more and more connected, will we someday see people remotely using the cellphone transmitter on a military base or any sensitive area in order to look for flaws and holes in radar coverage? Just a thought.
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A chapter in Lawrence Lessig's latest book, The Future of Ideas, covers the topic of spectrum as a controlled commons. Many feel with modern technology it should be de-regulated and simply sold to any of the highest bidders. Interference with military transmissions has been one key arguing point. His book discusses it well and raises the argument for easing government control of the spectrum commons. I highly recommend the book for anyone interesting in the ideas of the internet as a commons and how it should or should not be controlled.
Developers: We can use your help.
I live just over a mile from DMAFB, and I can't help but wonder how well my in-house wireless will react to this. I'm less than 300 ft. from a road military vehicles frequent, although presumably without radar turned on.
Perhaps it's time to grab an 802.11g access point before they are all military radar friendly. Or will the long term result be a ban on non-friendly access points?
I suppose time will tell. It has a habit of doing that.
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.
if the army takes away my wireless, how will i play America's Army online?
the military getting into consumer products, seems bad in general
/. if it weren't for a military research project.
WHAT? Do you live in a cave?
TONS of consumer technology has its roots in military-developed technology. You wouldn't be able to waste your time on
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Will WiFi stop working if I wardrive near a police car? Will it stop working if a police car drives by my house?
Since the cops have a speed trap right behind my house (about 30 feet from my kitchen wall), it looks like I'm going to have to cover my entire house with a Faraday cage.
Last time i checked, police departments should not be broadcasting in the military spectrum.. second, houses don't tend to speed, so there's no reason why the police should beam their radar guns at your house. Third, even if they did, it wouldn't do anything.
Information on police radar guns: "The granddaddy of systems is X band radar... X band operates on the narrow channel from 10.500 to 10.550 gigahertz (GHz)... K band appeared in the seventies and quickly became popular in its deadliest form: a hand held gun featuring an instant on switch. K band operates on a higher-frequency channel from 24.050 to 24.250 GHz... In 1989, photo radar appeared on the scene, and it was bad news for motorists--it operated on a frequency that was undetectable by existing radar detectors. The FCC set up a channel for photo-radar from 34.200 to 34.400 GHz, which lies within the wide Ka band... Which brings us to the Stalker, the latest wrinkle in hand-held radar guns. It operates on the Ka band anywhere from 34.200 to 35.200 GHz."
Here is another informative article on how the Wi-Fi is colliding with the millitary radar, down at 5 GHz side of the spectrum, specifically 5.150-5.350 GHz.
Thus, police radar should never affect Wi-Fi, and vice versa.
This seems like a win-win situation -- it doesn't have many technical details, but since the radar and WiFi spectrums overlap only somewhat, i'm guessing that WiFi devices will simply use the NON-overlapping spectrum with some safe zone when they detect radar. Which makes sense anyways, since interference would work on both the radar and the WiFi. It may reduce range or data rates but this seems like a pretty good way to solve the problem without having to get congress or the FCC involved. And adding more spectrum in the 2.4Ghz range might solve a lot more range/bandwidth problems than just those of military radar.
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Anything that keeps the existing big money players in place will be fine, but anything that smacks of increasing freedoms of speech and fair use --AKA market disruption-- will get the smack down from one or another federal agency. Commerce recently advised the FCC to ban the import of 802.11a devices intended for outdoor use citing air traffic concerns. Reaching an accord with the Pentagon is nice, but it's a small battle in a much larger war.
Which electronic magazine (or Phrack ?) will be the first to publish "Build your own WiFi scrambler/silencer for under 20 bucks" article.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
The military will have the ability to shut down any wireless network by a simple transmission.
Sweet. For them anyway....
With thousands of Wi Fi transmitters around, couldn't the military use passive radar technology?
You need to send out a pulse of radio waves to capture the echo off of metal objects. If there are enough transmitters out there you might not need to send a pulse. You might be able to read the echo off of objects using the thousands of transmitters around it. You'd be able to use radar but keep your emissions to zero!
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reducing the interference on military radars by Wi-Fi equipment
Investigate Best Buy! It's kind of pathetic when all Saddam and the rest of the United States' enemies need to do is pop down to Best Buy and buy a wireless hub to protect themselves from the military might of world's largest army.
All the Iraqi airforce needs to do now is jetison wireless hubs and GeForce FX cards and they'll be immune to both radar and heat-seeking missiles.
What's next? CAT-5 cable found to defeat stealth technology?
The vast majority of earth's landmass is covered by military radars, most of the times by a multitude of radars overlapping each other. Many of those radars have a radius that exceed some hundreds of miles. Now, wherever someone fires up a future wifi-card, it WILL pick up those distant signals, so, will there be a threshold involved that overrides the whole "detect radar" thingie, or will wifi cards all over the planet stop working just because they detect a radar 500 miles away?
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All of the above is supposition on the submitter's part, and NONE of it is referenced in teh article. First of all, the article says >
Nothing about 'detecting' military radar, and nothing about shutting down transmission when it does. Next up we have Pentagon endorsement of the Boxer/Allen Broaband Jumpstart Act which will open up an add'l 255MHz in the 5GHz band. Well, the article doesn't say anything about that either - all we've got is this quote:
Which is from One of the bill's sponsors (Boxer) - not the DOD!
Oh, and just in case you were wondering - None of this applies to existing 2.4GHz wireless gear...
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
Let me get this straight: new 802.11 equipment (typical output: 1 watt) is going to shut the hell up whenever it detects military radar transmsisions (typical output: 1 kilowatt).
What the hell for? Wouldn't radar signals squelch the hell out of any wi-fi carrier around? Even if wi-fi did manage to interfere with military radar, how can you confuse a weak, intermittent signal (wi-fi is spread-spectrum, remember) with a radar return?
Of course, as for the newly-created vulnerability of wireless access points to radar noise...I'm sure that homeland security (and other unsavory types) would *never* use this feature irresponsibly....say, in order to disrupt a potential terrorist's communications.
I'm equally sure that no enterprising young hacker out there with some basic RF skills would *ever* produce a wi-fi jamming device that mimicked the signature of military radar, but with much less amplification.
How long before Corporation A decides to get into a price war with Corp B, and sees the military radar detection as a cost savings removal?
Also, how many customers will give a rats ass about some military Radar? They will demand full power.
Did you even read the article?
This is an FCC bandwidth allotment issue, in the 5ghz range. Compliance with this agreement will be required in any device intended for the market. If Corporation A wants to have it's license to manufacture devices in that spectrum yanked, hey, more power to them.
- billn
What the military are concerned with is millions of such devices in the area of a radar raising the noise floor. It's a collective effect, rather than a jammer. To build an effective jammer, the jamming signals would need to be coming from all directions simultaneously.
Does this mean that you'll have Iraq solders running around with Pringle's cans scouting the radar sites out for Scuds to hit?
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Damned straight!
....and the list goes on and on. My personal opinion is that it is wonderful that we are able to take devices and inventions originally used to destroy and kill and turn them into things that better our quality of life.
Microwave ovens (radar research)
the worlds first electronic computer (for calculating artillery angles and trajectories)
the Internet (linking not only colleges and campuses, but military bases. The old original internet can still withstand a nuclear strike)
Pennicilin (an attempt to keep soldiers alive longer after being wounded, discovered via accident during this process)
Rocketry (advanced greatly by the Germans in WWII)
Most advances in radio technology and aeronautics were out of necessity during wars