Carmakers Oppose Opening Up 5GHZ Spectrum Space For Unlicensed Wi-Fi

s122604 writes "Automakers aren't too happy about a recent U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposal, which uses part of the wireless spectrum assigned to vehicle-to-vehicle technology for Wi-Fi instead. The FCC announced that it plans to free up 195 MHz of spectrum in the 5 GHz band for unlicensed use in an effort to address the U.S.' spectrum crisis. This could potentially lead to Wi-Fi speeds faster than 1 gigabit per second."

Comments

It's about money, as usual

[dreamchaser]

Automakers have invested a lot in developing systems that use the entire spectrum in that range. Boo hoo. The public should have dibs on some of that. It's not like the FCC, which voted unanimously on this one, took it all away from them. They just have to adjust.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

As a car owner and an owner of the entire spectrum (e.g. member of the public), I say "What?" to your post.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

you're a fucking idiot. What you've really said is that "nobody should have any quality of service" and "you know how you paid to be able to use this for safety systems and put a lot of effort in? Fuck you, I want my facebook to load faster."

Re:It's about money, as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. Those assholes won't have anything with any utility rolled out for another 10 years. We can use the wireless spectrum NOW.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[dreamchaser]

I guess you didn't bother to RTFA, and I don't use Facefuck, Shitter, or any other 'social networking'

Re: It's about money, as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

And bullshit too,
No wifi hardware is even designed to use the unauthorized bandwidth.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[fyngyrz]

You don't own that spectrum. Corporations own that spectrum. Right now, lobbyists from the electronics industry are paying / bribing / offering more to the regulators than the car manufacturers are prepared to meet. Just like the commercial broadcast spectrum segments -- AM and FM radio, television -- of which you get to use precisely zero, this isn't about you -- it's about the manufacturers of devices that will use that spectrum.

The FCC's spectrum allocation arm allocates so little of the available spectrum to the public, and in particular, easily usable spectrum, that it is fairly painful to contemplate. The only people with a public voice are those with extremely deep pockets, and that's no accident.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[Jetra]

I'm surprised that they aren't pulling out the "Interference" card.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, I read the fucking article, but actually know a little about the industry, instead of just trolling for page views.

Re: It's about money, as usual

[LiENUS]

Weird cos most mikrotik (and ubiquiti) gear should be able to use it with nothing but a firmware patch (actually no need to use a firmware patch just tick the box to disable regulatory restrictions but you run the risk of using other channels that aren't freed up yet)

Re:It's about money, as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, funny thing about the free market, it does not care how much money you have invested in something. If there is a higher demand for what you are dependent on then your product, well too bad for you. I understand that the automakers are not used to this idea after being handed so much tax money, but they better pony up if they want a monopoly on public spectrum.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[PopeRatzo]

The public should have dibs on some of that.

But..but..Job Creators!

They oppose the public having any access to the spectrum for the same reason all the major corporate entities don't want you to have access to any nice things without they get get a nickel in they pocket for it.

They let the internet get away from them and they vowed to never let it happen again. In their minds, the internet should have been cable television on steroids, not some big open bazaar where people can post blogs calling them assholes. They got caught with their pants down on that one, and they'll be damned if they're going to let it happen again.

Oh, and eternal copyright. Because they can.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

wtf are 'page views' here, dimwit? OP doesnt look like he was trolling either, and you're probably a 16 year old kid in mom's basement. enlighten us oh wise one since you know so much about the fucking industry. ass.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, no. It's the public's spectrum. The FCC runs it for us, and leases it out to corporations, WHO PAY US for the right to use it.

A landlord might lease out a room, and under the terms of that lease may not be allowed to enter the room unannounced any more, but that doesn't mean the landlord is no longer the owner.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[whois]

I think the future of radio transmission is moving away from "allocated frequencies" and towards direction sensing antennas, frequency hopping, error correction and traffic tagging. The reasons for this are multifold, but for starters having an agency say "nobody can use this frequency but Bob" doesn't stop Alice from using the frequency and crapflooding all over it. The law has provisions to stop Alice, but Bob is completely screwed while the law tracks down Alice and asks her to quit it.

Frequency hopping eases that for the source because it's much harder to jam. Interference still can happen but that's what the error correction is for, assuming non-intentional interference. Additionally, making the receive antenna directional makes an interfering source much harder to use because they've got to be on a similar angle to the receiver to screw things up.

In other words, the FCC is forcing people to keep up. First by telling TV stations to move, then by selling white space, now with this stuff. The slashdot post the other day about the UK looking to move radar out of 5Ghz and use passive radar is another example of changing the way radio is used. They aren't saying car makers can't use this, they're saying improve your systems to the point where everyone can use this without issue.

Of course it could still be about the money, since they originally sold the frequencies to automakers and now they're reselling it to wifi providers. I doubt auto makers are getting a refund.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[jones_supa]

I guess you didn't bother to RTFA, and I don't use Facefuck, Shitter, or any other 'social networking'

yeah, I read the fucking article, but actually know a little about the industry, instead of just trolling for page views.

wtf are 'page views' here, dimwit? OP doesnt look like he was trolling either, and you're probably a 16 year old kid in mom's basement. enlighten us oh wise one since you know so much about the fucking industry. ass.

Aahh... these crispy, eloquent comments is why I come to Slashdot.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[AK Marc]

The vast majority of spectrum is "reserved" (meaning reserved for government use or later sale). There shouldn't be "open" bands. There should be "closed" bands (say, some of the scientific bands, and a few for the mobile phones sold to guarantee quality), but the rest should be open. Anyone any reason, so long as it plays nicely with others.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[fluffy99]

I don't suppose you can give a single example of an auto or planned product that's actually using this spectrum? The auto makers are opposing it simply because they want to hang onto the spectrum.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[smpoole7]

> so long as it plays nicely with others

Ah, that's the rub, though. You'd still need some regulation and certified, per-manufactured units that were sealed against tampering. If you're suggesting that we just throw a giant chunk of spectrum out for people to do with as they please, it will be unusable within a year or two from all the interference. Even worse, it will be interfering with other services, including some of MY licensed ones. :)

Naturally, I object to that.

You want some math? Bozo The Redneck has a 5GHz unit that he has "improved." To get away from all of his neighbors' emissions, he found a little screw inside that would lower his frequency to 4.5GHz. Hey, there wasn't anyone else there! He then discovered that it would "put out more better" if he removed that silver can on the output (i.e., the filter). Harmonics are simply multiples of the fundamental frequency, so now he's radiating junk at 9GHz, 13.5GHz, and 18GHz. This doesn't even include the *spurious* products that he's generating at heaven-only-knows what frequencies, because he also goosed the power, so now the amplifier is clipping like mad. :)

That's when I perk up and take notice, because I have a licensed Dragonwave link at 18GHz that we absolutely depend on. It ferries (via audio-over-IP, as well as one T1-over-IP that was a BEAST to set up, but that's a separate story!) several signals for our radio stations, as well as telemetry and video monitoring (to watch for the @#$@#$ copper thieves). We kind of depend on that thing, y'know?

And if you think that's an unlikely scenario, think back to the CB craze of the late 70's. Most truck stops sold linear amplifiers. Highly illegal, but that didn't stop people from buying them. Better yet, the bozos had no idea how to tune them, so they radiated trash and harmonics that absolutely destroyed TV reception in rural areas, where people had to depend on over-the-air antennas -- i.e., the very areas that were most likely to have rednecks running "LEE-nyers." It was a very real problem, and the FCC (the CB's called him "uncle Charlie") was constantly running around, busting people for running these pieces of junk.

Just turning frequencies over to the public sounds like a good idea, but most people don't know what they're doing. As someone who loves Open Source and Open Standards and all that, it grieves me to say it, but in this particular case, you'd better have some oversight and control.

If you don't, the end result is going to be that everyone interferes with everyone else and NO ONE will be able to communicate. Read up on the history of the FCC sometime: it was actually created (at least in part) at the request of *broadcasters,* who were sick and tired of constant interference, scrambling for "open" frequencies and no real limits on operation.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

This. A thousand times this. Repeat for what passes for our whole society, by the way. Corporations bribe, take, and lie their way to finite resources while the people who own those resources get nothing. Spectrum, minerals, "intellectual property", it makes no difference.

The one thing they really fear, of course, is people communicating. Look at the attempts to turn the Internet into cable TV. Look at the kind of crime it was to own a fax machine in the Soviet Union, or a printing press in countless societies. The thing is, those things certainly aren't infinite but they're not particularly scarce either. Useful spectrum is limited, and it's not easy to get back once given away (it should never be sold, only leased if at all). Lack of useful spectrum makes it harder for people to communicate and, in particular, to communicate without "permission". Free association and free exchange of thoughts and ideas is not good for statist control freaks or their corporate masters.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[AK Marc]

If you're suggesting that we just throw a giant chunk of spectrum out for people to do with as they please, it will be unusable within a year or two from all the interference. Even worse, it will be interfering with other services, including some of MY licensed ones. :)

We've done that with 2.4 and 5 GHz, and it didn't work out the way you describe. Since reality has proven you wrong, I shouldn't have to take the time to do so. Also, 2.4 GHz had very poor rules on playing nice. Improved play-nice rules, and we'd get much more utility on an already useful range.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

While you don't need a permit to transmit on 2.4 and 5 GHz bands, there are very strict requirements on the radio transmitters and receivers operating there. It's not turned over to the public completely, which is probably what parent meant.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[AK Marc]

Yeah, so? It worked for ISM, but if we expand that idea to other ranges, it'll immediately collapse? You lost me there. The fact that it works is proof that it wouldn't.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, I haven't gotten any checks from the FCC recently...or, you know, ever.

Re: It's about money, as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

And bullshit too,
No wifi hardware is even designed to use the unauthorized bandwidth.

It takes those wifi vendors soooooo looooooong to fab chips and push new technologies to market. Just look at how long it took them to get 802.11ac equipment on the market. /sarcasm

You're a bloody id0t.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry but networking and internet connectivity for the public trump automaker greed.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't own that spectrum. Corporations own that spectrum. Right now, lobbyists from the electronics industry are paying / bribing / offering more to the regulators than the car manufacturers are prepared to meet. Just like the commercial broadcast spectrum segments -- AM and FM radio, television -- of which you get to use precisely zero, this isn't about you -- it's about the manufacturers of devices that will use that spectrum.

The FCC's spectrum allocation arm allocates so little of the available spectrum to the public, and in particular, easily usable spectrum, that it is fairly painful to contemplate. The only people with a public voice are those with extremely deep pockets, and that's no accident.

Gee, that's nice.

Care to tell me how pretty much all of that shit doesn't apply to all things driven by lobbyists?

And they wonder why democracy is dead...

Re:It's about money, as usual

[grantspassalan]

They want to implement their harebrained scheme, where cars communicate with each other to facilitate self driving cars in the future. Computers on the net, controlling cars is one of the most crazy ideas that anybody has come up with lately. Instead of hackers and criminals crashing computers only, they will crash car computers which will crash cars injuring and possibly killing people. If Microsoft has anything to say about this, they will insist that such vehicles run Windows.

Has there ever been a “secure” computer system? If a computer is on the net, it can be accessed and compromised, if there is an incentive to do so. I can just imagine some enterprising kid turning off the engines of vehicles traveling down the highway going past his house. Suddenly jamming on the brakes or running them off the road should be kinda fun also. If computer controlled cars should become the norm, I will have to drive my now 7-year-old car until the wheels fall off. I certainly won't buy such a hackable contraption.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[ShakaUVM]

Bozo The Redneck has a 5GHz unit that he has "improved." To get away from all of his neighbors' emissions, he found a little screw inside that would lower his frequency to 4.5GHz. Hey, there wasn't anyone else there! He then discovered that it would "put out more better" if he removed that silver can on the output (i.e., the filter). Harmonics are simply multiples of the fundamental frequency, so now he's radiating junk at 9GHz, 13.5GHz, and 18GHz.

This sounds exactly like every redneck I've known.

Talk your ear off for hours about the advantages of different kinds of notch filters.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[guises]

You get them indirectly, from the IRS. Don't like it? Lobby for higher taxes.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[smpoole7]

> It's not turned over to the public completely, which is probably what parent meant.

That is EXACTLY what I meant. And just for the record, there probably won't be "a screw" that Bozo can adjust. (Everything is synthesized now.) But he'll find a way. (Most likely, someone will come out with a downloadable software "mod.")

Back during the CB era, most of the better radios could easily be modified to operate on those illegal frequencies, above and below 27MHz. You could even order kits and install them. Came with easy-to-follow instructions "for educational purposes only!" (Heh.)

The point is: this is just classic idealism: "Give it to the people and trust them!" Sounds good. Makes a great slogan on a T-shirt.

Problem is, it didn't work before (see my comment on HOW the FCC came into existence) and it won't work now.

I hate government regulation AND I hate big business (I'm an equal-opportunity curmudgeon), but there are times when some control and oversight is needed. We can argue about alternative methods for assigning frequencies, maybe even putting some of this allocation stuff up for a public vote, but it has to be controlled.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[smpoole7]

> We've done that with 2.4 and 5 GHz, and it didn't work out the way you describe

Heh. You have obviously never used wireless in an apartment complex, or in a large building with several businesses, or even in a hotel "cluster" on the Interstate where dozens of different access points are fighting with one another for attention.

Our first data link, installed several years ago, was an unlicensed Motorola Canopy. Highly directional, 2.4GHz, worked like a charm ... until the folks who lived in the apartment complex right between our studios and transmitter site all bought Linksys and DLink access points. Not only were they arguing with each other about channels, they rendered that Motorola useless.

Fine; it was unlicensed. We couldn't complain. We knew the risk when we bought it.

But that's why we upgraded to the Dragonwave with a license. If anyone interferes with that, we can take positive action with the FCC to get them shut down or fixed.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I don't get it. What is so hard about designing these systems as Ad-hoc Wifi instead of whatever method they're currently using?

Re:It's about money, as usual

[AK Marc]

Problem is, it didn't work before

So you are saying that 2.4 GHz is unusable. Reality proves you wrong. I still don't get what you are saying. You objected to my " open [them to] Anyone [for] any reason, so long as it plays nicely with others." which is exactly what existing ISM is, and ISM works pretty well, far better than you assert it "would" if it existed.

From how I read it, either you are the most disagreeable person to agree with me ever, or you are arguing that reality is wrong because you find it contradictory to your personal opinion. Please help me understand, without unrelated references to the CB era that pre-dates 90% of the people here.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[mlosh]

Yeah, there's about one hundred vehicles in Ann Arbor right now running a multi-manufacturer pilot test of the car-to-car communications. Many of the cars have warning systems that use the info passed between cars to alert driver of a danger. This is useful whether or not we end up with self-driving cars. So, yes, both manufacturers the DOTs around the world want to hang onto the spectrum. It could help save lives, improve traffic flow and road utilization, and give manufacturers a set of new features they can sell to improve their profits. How horrible!

We can debate if this is the best use of spectrum. I think it is a pretty good use, and it will need to be protected and used in a coordinated way to make these vehicle applications feasible and effective. Maybe you'd rather have faster Facebook updates or see better video on demand on your smartphone or something? Would you think that's a lot more important than avoiding a massive pile up in a white-out snowstorm or fog? Manufacturers won't announce dates or specific models yet, but it could be fairly close. But it won't happen if poor spectrum management makes it technically infeasible.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[fluffy99]

Yeah, there's about one hundred vehicles in Ann Arbor right now running a multi-manufacturer pilot test of the car-to-car communications. Many of the cars have warning systems that use the info passed between cars to alert driver of a danger. This is useful whether or not we end up with self-driving cars. So, yes, both manufacturers the DOTs around the world want to hang onto the spectrum. It could help save lives, improve traffic flow and road utilization, and give manufacturers a set of new features they can sell to improve their profits. How horrible!

We can debate if this is the best use of spectrum. I think it is a pretty good use, and it will need to be protected and used in a coordinated way to make these vehicle applications feasible and effective. Maybe you'd rather have faster Facebook updates or see better video on demand on your smartphone or something? Would you think that's a lot more important than avoiding a massive pile up in a white-out snowstorm or fog? Manufacturers won't announce dates or specific models yet, but it could be fairly close. But it won't happen if poor spectrum management makes it technically infeasible.

Interesting. The big question isn't really whether it's an appropriate use of the spectrum, but perhaps whether they really needs such a large chunk of the spectrum. There is already 555 MHz allocated for this general use band, so this represents 1/3 of the current bandwidth. Note that this is larger than the band allocated for 5GHZ 802.11 right now. This change is to shrink this very underused band and allow it to be used more productively. So products may be affected, but they won't get shutdown entirely. "Private Land Mobile" has multiple chunks allocated in the FCC spectrum, that do not have corresponding allocations in the intentional table so it would be stupid for auto makers to use those frequencies anyway.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you're suggesting that we just throw a giant chunk of spectrum out for people to do with as they please, it will be unusable within a year or two from all the interference."

This is a lie. It makes no economic or pragmatic sense whatsoever and it lacks a basic understanding of economics. If it's unusable then no one would use it and there would be no interference which would allow people to use it. Your argument defeats itself. What would naturally happen is that people would naturally use it either until they need no more or until it is saturated from use. But being saturated from use means its being used. Having a lot of interference means that its being used because there must be devices using it for there to be interference. and we have cordless phones and wifi and walkie talkies and CB radio before cell phones (and even now) and, sure, there is plenty of interference, but these spectra are still very useful. Interference in one area doesn't mean interference everywhere and so people can still use all the frequencies elsewhere. There is no basis in the argument that, without monopolized regulation, these spectra won't be used. The very basis of having government established monopolies is the fact that, without these monopolies, people would use these spectra. I would rather people be free to use these spectra than handing over these spectra to a bunch of commercial entities that use them to simply bombard us with commercials.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[TheTurtlesMoves]

There is a big catch with ISM bands. Interference is YOUR problem. So when a teleco wanted to not use anything but ISM (in canada IIRC) it was ruled that they could not because they cannot give assurances about the QoS.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[AK Marc]

In the US, they didn't ban telcos from using it, but none did for the reason you mention. But locking down over 99% of usable spectrum to defend the business cases for private companies doesn't seem to be the best use to me.

Re:It's about money, as usual

[adokink]

They are using 802.11p. A modified version of 802.11a, due to latency requirements for safety applications and services (time to collision is critical, and you also have to add the mean response time of human beings). There is also a lot of R&D in access protocols (diificult when lots of vehicles are accessing the medium omnidirectionally and constantly moving).

Re:It's about money, as usual

[david_thornley]

We've got a limited resource (the electromagnetic spectrum). The market-based thing to do is to auction off chunks of it for as much as the market can bear. Given that unlimited use becomes essentially impossible when people are too close together, and hence interfering with each other, I don't have a better idea.

The airwaves are public not private

[WillAffleckUW]

I'd rather have 1000 GBPS wireless for free than 10 GBPS wireless and stupid talking cars that anyone can hack if they have a decent rootkit, anyway.

Kitt; Micheal, you're going too fast.

Michael: Kitt, see this switch on your dashboard, it turns off your control of the accelerator.

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[LordLimecat]

Rootkits arent something that enable you to hack, and thats not how hacking works. Wireless systems can be made secure, you know, and we actually have a pretty good handle on it.

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[WillAffleckUW]

Only if they are firmware and you can't put a dongle device (which is under the steering column on most vehicles) or attach one to the internal system.

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[discord5]

Wireless systems can be made secure, you know, and we actually have a pretty good handle on it.

Yes, a splendid trackrecord to boot as well...

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[fredprado]

Wireless systems can be made somewhat secure, never perfectly secure, and car companies are not exactly doing everything they can to make these systems even adequately secure. As it is most are very insecure and easily hacked.

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[LordLimecat]

Wireless radio systems have been around for about a century now, and Im not aware of anyone ever pulling off a hack of a car radio system or a radio tower through radio transmission. Just "being wireless" doesnt by itself make something vulnerable, just like just "being on the internet" doesnt make you vulnerable.

Its all about whats on the other end, and what it allows access to. Something with a lot of advanced features is going to be a lot harder to secure, while something that just tracks nearby vehicles could be remarkably easy to secure.

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[LordLimecat]

Why yes, WPA has a pretty darn decent track record (even using a known-deficient algorithm on the backend), while WPA2 is generally acknowledged to be "secure".

Wireless hacks occur 99% of the time on open or WEP access points, and the other 1% on WPA with a poor passphrase. I dont believe anyone has actually pulled off an in-the-wild non-bruteforce hack of WPA, let alone WPA2.

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[jamesh]

I'd rather have 1000 GBPS wireless for free than 10 GBPS wireless and stupid talking cars that anyone can hack if they have a decent rootkit, anyway.

Kitt; Micheal, you're going too fast.

Michael: Kitt, see this switch on your dashboard, it turns off your control of the accelerator.

1TBPS?? Just how fast do you need to share pictures of cats on facebook????

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[epyT-R]

Oh really? As secure as not having wireless access? It's not like a car absolutely needs this gimmickry..

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[msauve]

"Wireless systems can be made secure, you know, and we actually have a pretty good handle on it."

Only for very limited definitions of "we."

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[icebike]

Wireless radio systems have been around for about a century now, and Im not aware of anyone ever pulling off a hack of a car radio system or a radio tower through radio transmission.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9229919/Car_hacking_Remote_access_and_other_security_issues
http://www.caranddriver.com/features/can-your-car-be-hacked-feature

But you don't have to gain control of a car to do damage. If you can convince a V2V car that the 5 cars immediately ahead just came to a full stop because of a collision, you may be able to trick it into braking hard, causing a collision behind you.

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[colfer]

Is it correct that the evil twin problem is unsolved for WPA2-Personal? Seems you can't prevent someone else from spoofing your SSID and harvesting the passphrase, unless you go to WPA2-Enterprise with Radius. Free Radius is available, but you need to run a little server in addition to your wireless router, I would guess. Maybe the extra hardware can double as a firewall?

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[Anonymous Coward]

you're retarded. This bandwidth has been reserved for safety systems to allow autonomous collision avoidance. This isn't proprietary cat videos for fords.

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[Runaway1956]

Might I point out that WinXP was "generally acknowledged to be secure"? Actually, it was pretty secure, compared to what we had been used to prior to WinXP. WinXP SP3 improves a great deal over WinXP, and Win7 improved even more - which only helps to demonstrate that "security" is a moving target. "Generally acknowledged" means squat.

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[PopeRatzo]

It's not like a car absolutely needs this gimmickry..

It does if they're going to know where you're at, where you shop, who you see and what you're doing. And so they can send you targeted ads telling you about "special deals" wherever you go.

You think you're car is going to have a "Do Not Track" switch on the dashboard?

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[PopeRatzo]

Just how fast do you need to share pictures of cats on facebook????

Faster than Ford needs to know which stores I shop at.

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[AK Marc]

You don't need RADIUS if you sign an AP cert and a user Cert, right?

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[slick7]

I'd rather have 1000 GBPS wireless for free than 10 GBPS wireless and stupid talking cars that anyone can hack if they have a decent rootkit, anyway.

Kitt; Micheal, you're going too fast.

Michael: Kitt, see this switch on your dashboard, it turns off your control of the accelerator.

If it talks, then, it can listen, so, who else can listen?

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[lgw]

It's not like a car absolutely needs antilock brakes, or seatbelts, or traction control, or a backup camera either. But driving is the most dangerous thing most of us do each week, and tech that can make it safer is a good plan..

We're very close now to freeway lanes with self-driving cars talking to one another making your freeway drive for you. My car does a pretty good job of knowing where the lanes are, and where the other cars nearby are, though cameras and radar, but it's not there yet. I've seen a Google self-driving car on the road, but the tall camera mast on the thing isn't going to work for most people. We need car-to-car comms for the compuets to chat with one another to do this right.

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[AK Marc]

Car to car transmissions are actually a secret plan to send all location data to Ford over a non-existent car-mesh-malware network. Got it. Do you wrap your car in a tinfoil hat?

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[LiENUS]

You still need a radius server, some routers have a built in radius server that you can provide the certs to to make it seem like you dont need one. however what is this "evil twin" attack that lets you harvest passphrases? The only attacks I'm aware of that involve an evil twin involve setting up a clone with the same ssid without encryption that pop up a captive portal when you try to browse the web and request the passphrase... ie social engineering there is no inherent weakness in wpa or wpa2 involving an evil twin afaik

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[colfer]

That's good to know. I assumed that since the client can't distinguish the real router form the fake, it would respond to a password challenge with the password response, and that the response could be demunged to the cleartext, in WPA2-Personal. Glad to know if that's not true.

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[LiENUS]

I dont believe wpa keys are done as just passwords, its more like the router says "solve the equation using this number i just gave you along with the key you already know" if your client cant provide the correct response then it doesn't allow it on, since the router rotates the number it provides and the equation is done in a complex and unidirectional manner it can't be reversed easily. Hence why people use rainbow tables to crack weaker keys. There are some weaknesses in the TKIP protocol used by wpa but wpa2 depreciates that and replaces it with a newer AES setup that is more secure in that regards and TKIP is done after the initial authentication.

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[grantspassalan]

It's not like a car absolutely needs antilock brakes, or seatbelts, or traction control, or a backup camera either. But driving is the most dangerous thing most of us do each week, and tech that can make it safer is a good plan..

We're very close now to freeway lanes with self-driving cars talking to one another making your freeway drive for you. My car does a pretty good job of knowing where the lanes are, and where the other cars nearby are, though cameras and radar, but it's not there yet. I've seen a Google self-driving car on the road, but the tall camera mast on the thing isn't going to work for most people. We need car-to-car comms for the compuets to chat with one another to do this right.

Except that antilock brakes, seatbelts, traction control etc. don't provide external access to their controllers. Any time such access is provided by a network connection, hacking the control system remotely becomes possible. Self driving cars is a neat idea, but not at the expense of safety. If car control systems are externally accessible, they WILL be compromised.

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[colfer]

Yes, but in WPA2-Personal, how can the client distinguish the router from it's evil twin? If the evil twin router issues a challenge, it can probably decode the response. All the client knows to do is send the password encoded to meet the challenge. With WPA2-Enterpise the client keeps track of the router's SSL public key, so can verify the challenge is valid. The evil twin cannot send a valid challenge because it does not have the real router's private key (provided by Radius). That's how I understand it. Or "guess-understand" it! I would like to be wrong.

There a pretty simple Free Radius setup tutorial here: http://kirkkosinski.com/2012/10/securing-wi-fi-with-peap-and-freeradius-on-centos/ So I guess it just requires a hardware server and making sure your router has decent firmware to connect.

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[lgw]

If car control systems are externally accessible, they WILL be compromised.

Why is that any kind of special threat? If an attacker wants to wreck a bunch of cars on the freeway that is already quite easy to do: so easy that it happens by accident all the time. In fact, the word "accident" with no context has come to mean just that sort of thing in conversation.

The risk of normal freeway driving is the most dangerous thing we do every day. Some far-fetched movie plot risk of someone hacking car safety systems is trivial by comparison.

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[PopeRatzo]

Think about what a bad idea "car-to-car" transmissions really are. If the plan is to prevent collisions say, or to manage traffic, why would you want to cars talking to each other? How do you know the wi-fi transponders on the vehicles around you are in good working order, and secure, etc?

Wouldn't it be better to have cars treat each other as hostile and each vehicle with its own collision-avoidance system?

Do you trust every wi-fi transmission around you as secure? Do you trust your carmaker that much?

And why should carmakers be the ones to implement such a system? Wouldn't it be better to have an open standard and have companies compete to see who can come up with the best collision-avoidance system? Don't you believe in the free market? The idea is to have less market integration, not more (if you believe in free markets, at least).

Would you expect carmakers to be in charge of the GPS systems, too? Should carmakers be in charge of the AM, FM and satellite radio spectra because there are radios in cars?

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[AK Marc]

Think about what a bad idea "car-to-car" transmissions really are. If the plan is to prevent collisions say, or to manage traffic, why would you want to cars talking to each other? How do you know the wi-fi transponders on the vehicles around you are in good working order, and secure, etc?

Why would the cars talk to each other? Well, obviously if you can't think of a good reason, then there can't be one. You are smarter than every automoteive engineer on the planet combined. Or, maybe there are some good technical reasons. How do you know the car in front of you is slowing? You see the brake lights, and eventually see a slowing of the car. If everyone used RADAR, then the RADAR frequencies would be crowded, and that still doesn't affect your complaints about security (someone could set up a jammer that responded to any RADAR query with a response that indicated the car was standing still).

So, do you want the delay while object recognition tries to figure out if it's a reflection or brake lights? Or would you prefer that cars exchange certificates with each other as they get close and transmit telemetry of that which is safety affecting (indicators, brake pressure, speed, wheel position, etc.)? When someone indicates they are slowing with a signed transmission, that's more secure than any other automatic response implemented to date.

That you have objections to the idea doesn't mean you have to deliberately misinterpret the use to make it sound worse than it is.

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[PopeRatzo]

Why would the cars talk to each other? Well, obviously if you can't think of a good reason, then there can't be one. You are smarter than every automoteive engineer on the planet combined. Or, maybe there are some good technical reasons.

So we need to give the auto manufacturers a chunk of public spectrum based on a technology that doesn't exist, and would only work if every vehicle on the road complied?

You still haven't answered why it should be car manufacturers who should be the ones in charge of this.

Since when do we put this handful of corporations in charge of public safety? Why not just turn over the roads to their ownership too? Then they could really make them safe.

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[AK Marc]

So we need to give the auto manufacturers a chunk of public spectrum based on a technology that doesn't exist, and would only work if every vehicle on the road complied?

It would work just fine with no compliant cars, as it would fall back on visual recognition and such. But "optimal" case lets the last car in a string of 100 know the first car is slowing before the driver of the second car is aware. Many (nearly all) rush-hour crashes are nose-to-tail of people in the middle of a chain where the first person stopped suddenly, where the person who "caused" the crash never even knows there was a crash, let alone that they caused it. Meshed secure wireless transmits information much faster than without.

You still haven't answered why it should be car manufacturers who should be the ones in charge of this.

I'm sorry if I didn't address all your points in the order you requested. You can take it out of my pay.

You are right. They should leave the safety to the aftermarket. When side-impact beams were the hot item, you couldn't get in to even get an oil change for all the side-impact beams being retrofit into older cars. And when airbags were "forced" in 1987, independent shops everywhere made a mint installing 3rd party airbags for all the older cars.

Or could it be that if safety isn't "required" in new cars, not only is it not adopted, but it's nearly impossible to get, no matter how much you paid for it? I know that when I had an issue with trying to fit seatbelts into a 1967 car that came without them, I could only find things online through speciality shops, and safety items were nearly impossible to get otherwise (unless I wanted to replace the seats with Recaro or the like and fit a 5-point belt).

Since when do we put this handful of corporations in charge of public safety?

Name a safety item for cars that wasn't forced on us by the auto makers (usually after it was forced on them by law).

Why not just turn over the roads to their ownership too? Then they could really make them safe.

Nah, the safest thing to do is to close all the roads. Close them to all but government traffic, and you'd see bus ridership increase, at least in areas where the busses are run by the government. That'd make them safe.

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[grantspassalan]

The big difference is that an attacker in China cannot cause havoc on an American highway. The inconvenient truth is that anything on a network can be compromised. I have no problem with a robotic driver controlling the car if it can do so safely with the same information that a human driver uses to do that same job. Human drivers do not have their brains networked to each other. Why should the brain of a car driving robot be networked to the brain of another car driving robot? Is such a car driving robot depends on GPS information to keep the car functioning safely, that could be another safety hazard. There are places where GPS information is not available (tunnels) and such GPS data can be spoofed by an attacker. Human drivers do not need GPS information either to safely operate an automobile.

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[kbolino]

In WPA-Personal (PSK) mode, the password is a shared secret, meaning that it is never passed over the air. Instead, authenticity is established by successful decryption: if I can use the password to decrypt a message I received from you, then I know that you knew the password when you encrypted it.

Technically, the password itself is not used as the key directly. It is repeatedly hashed with the SSID as a salt value to determine the pairwise master key (PMK) which is the actual encryption/decryption key. Since that key is a password equivalent (knowing it is as good as knowing the password), it is only used for the handshake process, which establishes two other keys, the PTK (pairwise transient key, used for unicast traffic) and the GTK (groupwise transient key, used for broadcast traffic), and those keys have no relation to the password.

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[LordLimecat]

The passphrase isnt sent cleartext. With PSK-based schemes, if the other party doesnt have the key, he simply cant read the data you send.

This isnt authentication as in the AP says "whats the code", its encryption where your laptop spews out encrypted data and if the other end cant read it, oh well.

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[LordLimecat]

Let me rephrase that. Basically all cryptography experts everywhere agree that so long as the key is kept secret (a big caveat), WPA2+AES is secure, as in "youre not cracking a key without quite a large amount of computational effort".

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[LordLimecat]

Youre assuming these systems use routable IPs. There is no reason to think that is the case; cars could simply form ad-hoc networks with non-routable addresses. Theres no reason to even think theyd use ethernet.

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[TheTurtlesMoves]

Do you think that a do not track switch would do anything if there was one?

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[lgw]

There are many more practical ways for "an attacker in China" to cause havoc without conjuring up absurd movie-plot threats.

Human drivers do not have their brains networked to each other. Why should the brain of a car driving robot be networked to the brain of another car driving robot?

Because the entire point of the excercise is for the robot driver to do a better job than a human.

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[grantspassalan]

Google has already demonstrated that robotic cars are quite capable of navigating on normal roads, without a network to other cars. Why make something more complicated than it needs to be? Other things being equal, a networked car will always be more vulnerable to attack than one that does not need an external wireless connection.

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[lgw]

Have you actually seen the Google car? The whole hting is an excercise in being more complicated than it needs to be (not knocking it, it is 1.0 after all).

Other things being equal, a networked car will always be more vulnerable to attack than one that does not need an external wireless connection.

What is with all the luddites on Slashdot? Of course it will be, all new technology brings new risks. Stop being afraid of everything in the world and enjoy a better life.

Re:The airwaves are public not private

[LiENUS]

The evil twin can't decode the response. It doesn't have the shared secret. The challenge response mechanism in wpa doesn't transmit the key over the air, it uses it to encode/decode a response message.

dear car makers

[Anonymous Coward]

please try to setup a wifi network for a large event "10k+ people" that's were we really need the extra channels!

and like vehicle-to-vehicle comms

[Anonymous Coward]

is gonna get anywhere anytime soon... it's nearly worthless until every car on the road has it.. which will take a LONG time.. even getting to something like 90%+ v2v-enabled will take decades.

Re:and like vehicle-to-vehicle comms

[epyT-R]

and why would anyone want this? you do realize the rather large corporate/government monkey that will come with this, right?

Re:and like vehicle-to-vehicle comms

[icebike]

is gonna get anywhere anytime soon... it's nearly worthless until every car on the road has it.. which will take a LONG time.. even getting to something like 90%+ v2v-enabled will take decades.

The benefits start accruing once 10 percent of the vehicles on the road have it. You don't need 90%. You don't even need 30%.

As you rush headlong into a fogged in traffic jam, there is a good chance that at least one vehicle in that jam will this technology and warn your car well ahead of time, so you can slow down (also slowing those behind you). You don't need every car to have this. Similarly, in-road transmitters can warn just enough new cars of trouble ahead to slow an entire stream of traffic.

Sure, not ALL of the capabilities of V2V will be available immediately, but plenty of them will work even with a small percentage of participants.

That being said, development of these systems is far from complete, and shifting them to new frequencies is really a last minute decision. There is no real reason that 5GHZ is ideal for this V2V use, and something much higher up in the spectrum might actually work just as well, if not better.

Re:and like vehicle-to-vehicle comms

[HornWumpus]

Or you could learn to drive in fog and not out drive your vision.

Re:and like vehicle-to-vehicle comms

[PopeRatzo]

This isn't for "vehicle-to-vehicle comms.

Re:and like vehicle-to-vehicle comms

[Dahan]

This isn't for "vehicle-to-vehicle comms.

"Automakers aren't too happy about a recent U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposal, which uses part of the wireless spectrum assigned to vehicle-to-vehicle technology for Wi-Fi instead."

RTFS

Re:and like vehicle-to-vehicle comms

[Kreigaffe]

Dunno. My car's got a pretty advanced early warning system that uses some fairly high-frequency wavelengths, namely the visible portion of the spectrum.

Random traffic jams are only an issue when jackasses are following too closely in the first place, and not paying attention in the second.

Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[Immostlyharmless]

My router at home does N speeds of 300 megs and is attached to 16 meg cable, Do I really NEED to connect to my router at over 1 gig speeds if the cable modem it's connected to is still linked to the same half arsed, capped cable?

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[Anonymous Coward]

short term thinker

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[DerekLyons]

You do realize that not all routers are attached to capped cable modems?

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[DeathFromSomewhere]

Do you only have one device in your house? Because I'm pretty sure a lot of us have multiple.

Remember kids, "I can't use this" is not the same thing as "nobody can use this".

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[cosm]

My router at home does N speeds of 300 megs and is attached to 16 meg cable, Do I really NEED to connect to my router at over 1 gig speeds if the cable modem it's connected to is still linked to the same half arsed, capped cable?

Enterprise wireless users transferring large files over the network? Large campus deployments serving wide areas? Not everybody uses the network just for the WAN pipe...though I get the feeling most people these days just take everything layer 7 and below for granted (i.e. "What, isn't the network just my cable plugged in?").

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[Immostlyharmless]

Well granted, I scaled this down to my own usage when I posted this, but is it not the backbone providers claiming they are being saturated? I assume I can see where one localized wide area wireless network with +1 gigabit speeds might be useful, but how much extra are we really going to eek out of it over what we have now?

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[Anonymous Coward]

My router at home does N speeds of 300 megs and is attached to 16 meg cable, Do I really NEED to connect to my router at over 1 gig speeds if the cable modem it's connected to is still linked to the same half arsed, capped cable?

You're making a few assumptions:
* that the only place bits can come from from are the Internet: some of like fast speeds between different home machines;
* you're also thinking as a single person: some households have many people (who may want faster speeds between different home machines);
* your thinking about "home": WiFi is used in places like offices, where people may want to copy files to/from file servers;
* said offices tend to have a lot of computers, so the faster some can copy said files, the sooner they can get off the network and let others use the channel

Perhaps 300 Mbps is fast enough for you. 56 Kbps used to be fast enough for a lot of folks Back In the Day(tm): but then someone thought up of DSL and DOCSIS, and the faster speeds allowed new uses. Perhaps 1 Gbps WiFi connections will spur some new thing that we haven't thought of yet, or it may simply be diminishing returns at this point. Who knows. Let's build it, and see if anyone comes.

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[Immostlyharmless]

Um, yeah, 4 desktops, 2 tablets, 3 phones, 1 blu ray player, 2 tvs, and an xbox 360.....and no matter how many more devices I hook up, I still am limited to 16 megs at the cable modem...? I *wish* I had more speed, but until they scale my wired connection up by a factor of almost 20 my wireless is fine. Im sure it will happen, eventually, cause my cable has only taken 15 years to go from 1.5 megs to 16, hell 300 should be right around the corner...

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a resident near Kansas City, it's fairly important to me.

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[DFurno2003]

1 gig speeds in the same room, make sure your lunch box isn't blocking the antenna.

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[DeathFromSomewhere]

And you have never copied files from one device to the other. Amazing. Allow me to repeat myself:

Remember kids, "I can't use this" is not the same thing as "nobody can use this".

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[BStocknd]

Just because your internet is limited to 16mbit doesn't mean there's no advantage to faster wireless. The best example would be transferring files or watching HD videos over wireless from a local share. Not to mention there could be plenty of applications outside of personal use in your home. Think of large WDS meshes for example.

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[kuhnto]

Unfortunatly, no one can understand the possibilities of using new capabilities until they exist. (Please note, i am generalizng here), until wifi and the opening of 2.4 (worthless in the eyes of the FCC) spectrum did the explosion of wifi communication occur. Hopefully the same will happen with a new RF band such as the 5 ghz bAnd.

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[Anonymous Coward]

The grandparent could have expressed it better, but I think the reference was to internal communication. You know - PC to NAS, Xbox to media centre, that sort of thing. Granted that the 'net is a bottleneck, but if communications don't need to go over the cable connection, faster wireless could be a very big benefit.

Now, that said, I'm planning on wiring my house up with CAT6e, but still - my Internet connection is only 20 or 30 Mbps, yet I'm still going to be doing it ...

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[icebike]

What is the limit between devices?

Broadcasting movies off of your Blue-Ray to a Tablet downstairs? Gaming between the desktops? Watching the game from your Cable TV on your portable device out on the deck, or by the pool?

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[adolf]

Is every single thing you do with a network connection between the device in front of you and the Internet?

I do all sorts of stuff with my home network.

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[cosm]

Well granted, I scaled this down to my own usage when I posted this, but is it not the backbone providers claiming they are being saturated? I assume I can see where one localized wide area wireless network with +1 gigabit speeds might be useful, but how much extra are we really going to eek out of it over what we have now?

Up to 700+ Mbps more? You're still restricting your vision to the WAN pipe. If I am a corporate user who moves large whatevers around between shares, the speeds 11ac offers are much welcomed. Yes of course your home internet downstream/upstream will see no substantive difference, but that isn't the point. The point is more and more devices on the WLAN in the home are needing more and more bandwidth availability (think streaming media servers and the like). Plus with more tablets, laptops, phones, toasters, whatever, the more bandwidth you have to your local L2 the better.

One side comment... if the switchport on 11ac bridges is still 1G, unless you've got multi-port bridges that can port-channel/LACP to an upstream aggregation switch, your total pool of bandwidth available to associated stations is still 1G shared to all devices on the bridge/AP.

In reference to your backbone providers comment, this issue has nothing to do with that. Backbone providers live in fiberland. Their last-mile connections to you will not see more traffic with 11ac deployed because the last-mile is already most consumer's bottleneck to the internet. If your WAN pipe was bigger than your wireless NICs negotiated pipe, and your wireless capabilities subsequently increased, then telcos would see increased link utilization, but this is not the case.

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[epyT-R]

you might want to stream HD video from a fileserver to other devices on your network.. Actually, most of the issue isn't the printed rated speed, but the power of the cpu.. most times, routed pkt rates are far lower, with many models dropping way below the ISP caps.

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[sumdumass]

Yes, you do. It will come in extremely handy when you have 100 people over for a cook out, family reunion, wedding, whatever and they each have a device that wants to connect.

1 gig speeds might not be something useful in your future, but it certainly can be useful to others.

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[Chuck Chunder]

And you have never copied files from one device to the other.

He does, he's just ultra paranoid and routes it all through TOR.

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[Runaway1956]

Obviously, you lack imagination. The MODEM may be limited to 56k, FFS - but that doesn't stop your network from utilizing gigs of bandwidth for gaming, streaming, file transfers, etc within your own network.

Yes, I was still limited to 56k internet the first time I transferred an ISO file from one computer to another in less than a minute.

Having more speed and/or power available than you want or need is NEVER a "bad thing".

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[PopeRatzo]

but until they scale my wired connection up by a factor of almost 20 my wireless is fine.

Were you the guy saying "I'll never need more than 128k of RAM in my lifetime"?

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[PopeRatzo]

Watching the game from your Cable TV on your portable device out on the deck, or by the pool?

Oh man, you got a pool? Geez, I bet that's nice. I got a back yard full of snow.

I never get nice stuff.

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[HJED]

And you never need to transfer files or other data between these computers? You're cable modem should not limit that. This is more use for corporate networks and large events, though.

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[Urza9814]

I don't need gig speeds, but I certainly need N...when running speed tests I've broken 56mbps. To the open internet, on wifi. I no longer think about what I might like to download for tomorrow or two days from now; it's now only about what I want to download for ten minutes from now. And it is awesome.

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[Urza9814]

Shit, I transfer stuff from this computer to one three feet to my right via dropbox...and I'm talking gigs at a time.

Then again, my downstream speed tests at 56mbps, upstream is around 26, so why the hell not?

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[sjames]

That depends, were you hoping to stream HD movies from the server downstairs to your laptop? Perhaps the kids/wife/ whoever in your house wants to watch a different movie at the same time.

Some people move a lot of data on their LAN without ever touching the internet.

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[loonwings]

I'm pretty sure Dropbox actually knows you're on a LAN and transfers stuff more directly than pc1>cloud>pc2.

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[rjr162]

And im sure the fcc cares about your wireless lan transfer speeds. This is more about the fact in more populated areas you cant even really transfer a file due to the massive amount of devices in such a compact area all trying to compete for limited frequencies.

Now if you add this extra frequency range and increase thr wireless speeds of each device already out there by utilizing it along with the current frequencies your using, what do you think is going to happen? The same shit thats happening now. A ton of devices all fighting over the same frequencies so everyone is all jamming each other just like you have now.

The only people who will benefit will be those in more rural areas or early adaptors. I can tell you even in the more rural area I'm in you can still see more distant access points (plus the ones next door and what not) that pretty much cover the 2.4 range... and this is only 4 or 5 APs. I can only imagine how bad arsas of say NYC are.

Now if they introduced the new frequencies but *left the speeds* at what they have now (dont simultaneously use more of the addon frequencies with the ones currently used to increase speed) it would be more benefical as more users could fit in without stepping all over each other. But then you'll have some people who just *have* to transfer files from machine to machine wirelessly instead of using cat 5 or 6 or even something like a thumbdrive or external usb to the benefit of your own speed and the wireless signal of others.

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[rts008]

Thank you for an excellent +1 Informative post.

While I wish/hope for more bandwidth with that last mile, I have found that the more bandwidth my home LAN has, the more useful/neat stuff I can do.

Bottom line:
You can NEVER have too much bandwidth!

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shit, I transfer stuff from this computer to one three feet to my right via dropbox...and I'm talking gigs at a time.

Then again, my downstream speed tests at 56mbps, upstream is around 26, so why the hell not?

Not all of us like to ensure our data is routed through a government agenc, er I mean "cloud", for scanning first.

But hey, whatever floats your boat...

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[Urza9814]

Pretty sure it doesn't, because the second PC doesn't start downloading until the first PC has fully finished uploading. And it takes twice the time to upload as it does to download, which would only really make sense if it's going to the cloud, since my downstream bandwidth is twice my upstream.

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Than you, sir, have a messed up LAN setup.

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[mr100percent]

Dropbox certainly has LAN support, check preferences. Perhaps your network isn't configured in such a way that they can see one another.

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[Anonymous Coward]

All your PC will start to sync when the upload is completed, no matter where they are.
But the synch will use a local source istead of the cloud if it's available.

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Many apartment buildings have pools, tennis courts, weight rooms, saunas, etc.

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[saleenS281]

Google provides 1gbit speeds in Kansas City. Why should they be limited because you don't personally have a use for it? That's like saying nobody should have an electric service run to their house because you happen to have solar panels...

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[LordVader717]

Even Bluray only uses 30 Mbps. Transferring files faster is nice, but you should really be using ethernet or powerline adapters rather than crowd the spectrum with your junk.

Re:Why is there a wi-fi crisis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy 200 hair dryers and a big sheet of polythene

I am so illiterate

[Quakeulf]

I see a techy subject and read it instantly as Carmackers...

needed because?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how gb+ wireless is needed. Sure I welcome any spectrum opening up from private/corporate control but the "oh just use wireless" mentality really bugs me. Wirelessly connecting devices that are inherently portable are ok but things that don't move should be wired and should stop polluting the airwaves. Things that should be wired, but usually aren't, include Xbox, ps3, boxes, roku, etc.

Re:needed because?

[c0lo]

the "oh just use wireless" mentality really bugs me.

Let me quote an aphorism launched by a well-known personality about 4 years ago:

Everything is better with bluetooth

Do you connect computer to computer?

[Sycraft-fu]

Then you may need more speed. Your N gets you more like 100mbps effective data rate (test it some time) since the WiFi speeds are displayed raw and there's a lot of overhead. Now that is 100mbps shared among all devices. So, if you connect to your router and it to a wired computer, no problem full bandwidth. However if you connect to another computer on WiFi, oh look, you guys are sharing. Have a bunch of computers on all accessing, that bandwidth starts to get spread thin.

If all you do is one computer to the Internet, then you are fine, for now at least. Otherwise? Yes, more bandwidth is good.

Show me the money

[goodmanj]

I'm one of those pinko liberal democrats. But where electromagnetic spectrum is concerned, I'm as mercenary as they come.

If car makers want spectrum, they can buy it just like everybody else. The FCC should put the entire radio spectrum up for sale to the highest bidder on a rotating 10-year cycle, nothing exempt except for a few bands set aside for emergency services, military, and scientific use.

FM radio, TV, taxicabs, ham radio, I don't care: if you want exclusive use of a slice of spectrum, you form a coalition of like-minded people willing to pay for it. If somebody else wants to pay more, go find a better business model.

Re:Show me the money

[Anonymous Coward]

this is for safety, dumbass. It's for vehicle to vehicle communications.

Re:Show me the money

[HornWumpus]

10 years is too short. Look at all the aggravation of moving a few TV channels around.

Also look at the technical hacks involved in maintaining backward compatibility in HD radio now and color TV back in the day. Breaking everybodies hardware on a ten year cycle is a non-starter.

Re:Show me the money

[Anonymous Coward]

Rotating so that you could break up spectrum into 10 parts and have each section a 100 year lease.

Re:Show me the money

[PopeRatzo]

this is for safety, dumbass. It's for vehicle to vehicle communications.

Yeah, dumbass, it's for the children!

It's for your own safety. Because the only way to make you safe is if the car makers can talk to your car, and more important, your car can talk to them.

And because why should you get something for free when a big corporation can get something for free?

Re:Show me the money

[goodmanj]

10 years is too short. Look at all the aggravation of moving a few TV channels around.

What aggravation? I would imagine most TV channels would bid higher for their existing channel to avoid the cost of switching, while a new channel or service would buy whatever's cheapest: as a result, there wouldn't be any "channel churn": the poorest old station would be replaced by a newcomer, and everyone else would continue as usual.

And while I'm no expert on TV technology, I strongly suspect that most VHF broadcast channels could switch to another VHF channel with the push of a button. (UHF might require a new antenna and equipment.)

And finally, this whole idea of fixed channels at fixed frequencies is a 20th-century legacy. In the 21st, all we care about is bandwidth, the rest is a software problem. Here's what you do: the would FCC broadcast a frequency map on a dedicated band. Yesterday, "Channel 4" was at 66 Mhz, but today it's at 82 Mhz. You don't care, you just hit the "4" on your remote control, and your TV's firmware uses the frequency map to figure out the rest.

Re:Show me the money

[Anonymous Coward]

And what, exactly, are the advantages of this proposal? Why should large moneyed interests be able to prevent me from sending certain electromagnetic signals, just because they have more money?

The alleged goal of the FCC allocation of the spectrum is to serve the public interest. That's better than serving the interests of wealthy corporations.

You may protest that the FCC does a poor job at serving the public interest, because large moneyed interests are bribing it to subvert the public interest. If so, your proposal doesn't fix the problem. It merely makes the bribery legal.

Re:Show me the money

[slimjim8094]

You obviously don't know anything about radio. Switching frequencies within a band requires an entirely new antenna construction for any efficiency at the kind of power commercial broadcasting uses. It's not a software problem at all.

The approximate wavelength of 66MHz is 4.5 meters, while it's 3.6 meters for 82MHz. That requires lopping about 20% off of the top of the antenna, or else adding enough to bring it up to the next efficient multiple of the new wavelength. You must have seen commercial broadcast masts before - 20% is a lot of antenna. Plus, for the kind of power commercial broadcasters use, you'd probably need to replace a lot of components of the transmitter itself since they're pretty carefully tuned to the frequency. It could easily cost about $50k just for that (not including the tower work), even for a not-so-big TV station.

Finally, the differences in propagation even of the two relatively close frequencies you mention make it likely that a lot of people would go from decent TV reception to none at all.

Thankfully nobody at the FCC is taking this kind of advice. Frequency allocations are - on the whole - done pretty carefully. When they seem slow and stuffy, it's usually for a reason

Re:Show me the money

[Anonymous Coward]

which less than 0.001% of cars support, and wont support for another 20 years if you go by the auto makers theory of needing a new car every 4 years

dumbass

Re:Show me the money

[Anonymous Coward]

no, retard, it's so the cars can talk to each other, broadcasting rate and position and intent, so that they can, you know, not run into each other, and slow down before they cause a traffic jam instead of jamming on the brakes. I suppose you also think we should "liberate" the spectrum used by those evil aircraft manufacturers for transponders. They didn't pay for that spectrum. And they're clearly using the data to get rich. You're even stupider then the retards who vote Tea Party and chant "starve the beast". i

Oh yeah, fucktard, where do cars rank in the list of killers in the western world?

Re:Show me the money

[stoploss]

The FCC should put the entire radio spectrum up for sale to the highest bidder on a rotating 10-year cycle, nothing exempt except for a few bands set aside for emergency services, military, and scientific use.

So, who exactly is going to bid on making part of the spectrum unlicensed and then pay to allocate it for nonexclusive use? Or does the current 2.4 & 5 GHz unlicensed spectra for WiFi/"whatever the hell anyone wants to use it for" count under one of those exemptions you list? None of them seem applicable to me.

I'm one of those pinko liberal democrats. But where electromagnetic spectrum is concerned, I'm as mercenary as they come.

I'm therefore surprised you didn't come out in strong support of a public commons of unlicensed spectra. You talked about selling off this spectrum for exclusive access, but you didn't mention the option of not selling it at all.

I like the fact that we have all these gadgets playing together (and yes, sometimes interfering) in unlicensed spectra. How many of these things wouldn't exist if their inventor/manufacturer had to purchase expensive exclusive access frequency because no public commons existed?

Your argument seems analogous to advocating preventing city planners from allocating space for a public park and arguing that citizens who really want a park will just band together and buy the real estate to make one. Who cares if the local landfill cartel can outbid the neighborhood park boosters?

Re:Show me the money

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm one of those pinko liberal democrats. But where electromagnetic spectrum is concerned, I'm as mercenary as they come.

No, you're just unprincipled. Unfortunately for you, others are also unprincipled and don't share your inconsistent personal preferences.

There was a time when this country was run by men of principle - around 1789 - but that time has passed and now we are a democracy subject to mob rule without regard to principles, or reason.

You made your bed; now lie in it.

Re:Show me the money

[KGIII]

Ham is for public safety actually. You may want to keep that one free because you may need a ham someday. Really...

Re:Show me the money

[Anonymous Coward]

Might I add that if this was the way things ran, then there would be nothing stopping AT&T or Comcast or whomever to buy ALL the spectrum and sell chips at 500 dollars a pop for every wireless link in the country.

Re:Show me the money

[Ceriel Nosforit]

ham radio

"In the Bridgeport area, also struck hard by Hurricane Sandy, members of the Greater Bridgeport Amateur Radio Club were called into action.

John Russo, GBARC president, tells Examiner.com that 25 volunteers were deployed over the course of a week, assisting the Bridgeport, Stratford and Red Cross operation centers.

Hams also provided information to help FEMA with damage assessments, he said."

- http://www.examiner.com/article/ham-radio-s-response-to-hurricane-sandy-is-reviewed-and-praised

Forming coalitions and raising funds in a disaster area is difficult, you ignorant motherfucker.

Re:Show me the money

[Anonymous Coward]

I think hams do themselves a disservice when they talk about the purpose of ham radio being to allow for emergency communications and advancement of the radio art and all that shit, because when it comes right down to it, the frequency spectrum is a natural resource that we all have a right to use. Hams (and everyone) should have a right to use radio, but the way the pro-ham arguments usually lead, it's as if, if we can guarantee that emergency communications are taken care of, and that no further advancement of radio can come from private individuals, then it's time for the hams to give up their spectrum so that some corporation can have it and waste it on some bullshit. Even if hams want to do nothing but sit on their ass and play with radios all day, doing nothing for society, they still have a right to spectrum. Indeed, I think they have a right to a lot more than they currently have. Current allocations are so small, particularly at the lower frequencies which easier to use for amateurs who want to build their own radios.

Actually, I thought ham was for people to actually have a tiny chunk of the spectrum that they're allowed to use for their own purposes. You know, as opposed to the vast majority of it which belongs to various corporations and the government.

Re:Show me the money

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm one of those pinko liberal democrats. But where electromagnetic spectrum is concerned, I'm as mercenary as they come.

If car makers want spectrum, they can buy it just like everybody else. The FCC should put the entire radio spectrum up for sale to the highest bidder on a rotating 10-year cycle, nothing exempt except for a few bands set aside for emergency services, military, and scientific use.

FM radio, TV, taxicabs, ham radio, I don't care: if you want exclusive use of a slice of spectrum, you form a coalition of like-minded people willing to pay for it...

Oh yeah. I'm sure that shit won't ever end in a monopoly.

Ow! Ow! OWW! Dammit History, will you stop beating me over the head! That shit hurts!

Re:Show me the money

[houghi]

So nothing for e.g. rc planes. Nothing for HAM radio. Nothing for indivuduals. All for the companies with the most money.

Possible solution 1)
Hello, I am Google and I just bought everything, so there will be NO competition anymore. I will now buy all the phone and other companies, so they can not compete in 10 years time. Prices will be low as they do not have any serious business anymore
Possible solution 2)
Hello, we are the coalition of phone companies and we bid 1USD.

The problem with the first is that you will create a monopoly.
The problem with the second is that you do not get any money. If not getting any money is not a problem, then why sell it in the first place?

Selling it has another disadvantage. It will create false scarcity and that will drive up prices. So instead of the intention of competition to drive down prices for the consumer, it will drive up prices in these cases.

Re:Show me the money

[Anonymous Coward]

no, retard, it's so the cars can talk to each other, broadcasting rate and position and intent, so that they can, you know, not run into each other, and slow down before they cause a traffic jam instead of jamming on the brakes. I suppose you also think we should "liberate" the spectrum used by those evil aircraft manufacturers for transponders. They didn't pay for that spectrum. And they're clearly using the data to get rich. You're even stupider then the retards who vote Tea Party and chant "starve the beast". i

Oh yeah, fucktard, where do cars rank in the list of killers in the western world?

Hey dumbass.

Let me let you in on a little secret.

They want this bandwidth for one reason and one reason only.

So they can fucking charge millions of people for the right to use it, under a new law requiring you to.

Either understand the capitalistic system you live and breathe in, or shut the fuck up about it. Anything else makes all of you look like ignorant fucktards.

Re:Show me the money

[c0lo]

broadcasting rate and position and intent?

who's intent?

Re:Show me the money

[Anonymous Coward]

Intent should never be assumed to match what is indicated. Position and velocity can be ascertained using radar and/or lidar. As far as I'm concerned all other cars on the road are untrusted, and I wouldn't trust broadcasts from another car's computer either. Therefore why do they need to communicate wirelessly.

Re:Show me the money

[Sloppy]

The FCC should put the entire radio spectrum up for sale to the highest bidder on a rotating 10-year cycle,

Let me get this straight: every single device which uses radio, should potentially become obsolete, every ten years?

"Yeeah, I bought this access point in 2011. I know, I know, it uses a band which might be owned by the police department starting January 1 2014 but I figured it was still worth the money even if I only get to use it for three years. And besides, remember when my 2005 walkie-talkies supposedly became illegal in 2006 because the FAA won the bid for that piece of spectrum? Nobody ever caught on that I had kept on using them, because it was so infrequent. And face it: it was kind of fun joining in on the pilot-ground conversations every once in a while."

Re:Show me the money

[goodmanj]

My family was involved in one of the biggest communications cutoff disasters I've ever heard of: Hurricane Iniki hit my island in Hawaii in 1992. Damn near every telephone pole on the island was destroyed, *nobody* had phone service, and it's not like you could drive to somewhere that had a phone.

The hams sounded the trumpets and "came to the rescue". I heard of ... oh, a whole two or three people who got messages to friends and family on the mainland through ham radio. Meanwhile, within a couple of days the state emergency services and FEMA set up satellite phone booths in most major towns, which everyone used for the next few weeks until service was restored.

Ham radio is a fun hobby, but its public safety value is highly overrated. Especially since there are far fewer hams now than in '92.

Re:Show me the money

[PopeRatzo]

it's so the cars can talk to each other, broadcasting rate and position and intent

And why exactly should the carmakers be the one in charge of this new service?

Re:Show me the money

[goodmanj]

There are a huge, diverse range of highly motivated and rich bidders who would like some radio spectrum. There is zero chance that everyone will form a workable price-fixing coalition, and zero chance that one bidder will be able to outbid them all.

You say you're worried about a monopoly: well so am I. Worst-case scenario for my proposal, a very rich buyer gets a 10-year "monopoly" on a broad swath of spectrum, paying $billions to the federal government's coffers to do so (and lowering all our taxes as a result.) Compare that to today's system, where outdated service providers with good lobbyists can keep a monopoly on a broad swath of spectrum forever, for free.

Let's take RC toys as an example. I want to sell RC toys, so I and my fellow RC manufacturers add $5 to the price of every device we sell for frequency licensing. Wild-ass guess, suppose that's 20 million devices a year in the U.S. We bid $100 million for the 72-73 Mhz band, which is the one we've always used for model aircraft.

We, and a bunch of other people with similar cash reserves, are going up against Google, who tries to buy up ALL THE BANDWIDTH! -- everything from 0 to 10 Ghz. God only knows what they're going to do with it. If they want it all, they're going to have to pay $100 million per MHz -- $300 billion for the whole shebang. Google's rich, but they're not that rich: they'll realize they can make more money by letting us have our little 1 Mhz band and bidding in bulk for cheaper parts of the spectrum.

What if they *do* decide to spend enough cash to buy us out? We've got lots of options, but the best is to improve our tech. Current RC systems use an 80-year-old, very bandwidth-inefficient protocol. We can either make do with fewer RC channels, or redesign our receivers to make better use of a smaller slice of spectrum. That ain't cheap, but the end result is more efficient utilization of a precious resource.

Re:Show me the money

[goodmanj]

Yes, everything could *potentially* become obsolete, but it won't happen very often. "Spectrum churn" will be very small, because anyone who buys new spectrum that was formerly used for something else will have to deal with interference from legacy systems -- so they'll bid low for that "polluted" spectrum. Meanwhile, the old licensee will be willing to pay a premium to avoid having to retool all their devices.

In short, spectrum will only change hands when the old licensee is *very* obsolete, and the new guy's tech is vastly more popular, profitable, and interference-tolerant.

Finally, your two examples both involve government emergency/safety spectrum, which I said should be reserved from bidding to avoid the problems you're talking about.

Re:Show me the money

[goodmanj]

I've seen hams working first-hand in a disaster area (Hurricane Iniki in Hawaii in 1992, where *all* communication was cut off from the island.) They did help, but there weren't enough of them to make a significant difference, and the state and federal emergency services set up a big satellite-phone bank very quickly.

The disaster response ability of ham radio is a bit like an outboard boat. Sure, if there's ever a flood, I'll use my boat to help rescue people. But does that mean I should get free gas for my boat every day I go fishing?

Re:Show me the money

[goodmanj]

So, who exactly is going to bid on making part of the spectrum unlicensed and then pay to allocate it for nonexclusive use? Or does the current 2.4 & 5 GHz unlicensed spectra for WiFi/"whatever the hell anyone wants to use it for" count under one of those exemptions you list? None of them seem applicable to me.

My bad. My post was intended to emphasize the free-market side of my proposal, but I didn't mean to suggest that we should get rid of unlicensed spectra. Absolutely there should be "public parks". I'm arguing that anything that *is* licensed should be paid for by competitive auction. To continue your analogy, there shouldn't be *private* parks, held in perpetuity for free by people on a first-name basis with the planning department.

Re:Show me the money

[goodmanj]

I'm aware of those issues. But in the end, an antenna is just a metal rod. Changing its length is easy(*). And $50K for new transmitter hardware? That's chump change. Just run a couple extra local commercials during the evening news to pay for it.

(*) Provided the metal rod is a several-meter-long TV antenna. Replacing a hundred-meter-high AM radio antenna would be a lot more expensive.... so the AM radio stations should be prepared to bid high for their spectrum to avoid the cost of switching.

Re:Show me the money

[goodmanj]

This sounds great. Sounds like something I should pay for, just like I pay for airbags, seat belts, and whatnot.

Re:Show me the money

[satsuke]

.. ham radio has little slices all over the spectrum .. with the only ones in commercially useful bands being so small that there wouldn't be enough to even make them commercially viable..

e.g. the little slice of 10mhz at 2.4ghz won't make a bit of difference, and the allocations going much higher than that have a very high cost for deployment due to attenuation unless you are doing something point-to-point, and there is plenty of bandwidth for that sort of thing.

Re:Show me the money

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you not aware of the role HAM radio operators play in natural disasters?

Re:Show me the money

[Anonymous Coward]

The FCC should put the entire radio spectrum up for sale to the highest bidder on a rotating 10-year cycle, nothing exempt except for a few bands set aside for emergency services, military, and scientific use.

If we were to follow your logic we would have no national parks because all federal land should be rented out to giant corporations every ten years on a rotating cycle.

Re:Show me the money

[Anonymous Coward]

And the tens of billions of dollars in wireless gear with built in antennas that have to be thrown away due to a simple frequency change?

Cell phones, TV sets, play stations, laptops, WiFi routers, tablets, ereaders, and a host of other items... really?

A very simple solution:

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of using wifi, legalize slavery and have your slaves transfer the data from Point A to Point B with portable hard drives. Simple. Easy. Clean. Free.

And if the data gets lost, you can torture and/or kill your worthless negro.

Car to Car Spectrum is needed.

[rahvin112]

The problem with this article is people have no idea why the car manufacturers are upset, all they see is some big corporation opposing the release of more unlicensed public spectrum (and some sensationalist WIFI BS by bloggers). Or course this draws out the communists among us that want all corporations to go away.

This all fails to miss the entire point of why the Auto companies are opposing this. This spectrum is directly adjacent to spectrum allocated for intercar communication. What is intercar communication? It's spectrum that was allocated a number of years ago to allow direct communication between vehicles. What is the point of that? Well one of the key aspects of this spectrum is that without it you don't have reliable inter-car communication which will greatly hamper self driving cars.

See, if you are going to have self driving cars those cars need to be able to communicate with each other, they need to tell the cars around them that they need to change lanes, or that they are breaking. The holy grail of self driving cars is a situation where cars are driving 70MPH with about 2 feet between them. This will greatly increase the density of cars and allow the freeways to operate about 200% more efficiently than now. But for that all to work that cars have to tell each other what they are doing so the other vehicles can react. Even with no perception-reaction time for computers you will greatly decrease the possible efficiency if the cars can't communicate real time. The only way to make this safe is dedicated spectrum with low interference.

If we have thousands of WIFI signals in adjacent spectrum there will be so much interference that the systems won't be reliable, the result will either be safety problems or drastically reduced efficiency. Self driving cars are a holy grail of ITS (intelligent transportation systems) that has been being pursued since the early 90's. It will result in freeways that are so much more efficient than today that you could fit 3-4 times the number of cars in the same freeway without any slow downs or rush hour traffic jams. Not only that but you could read a book while driving to work.

We don't want to impede or endanger self driving cars. The car manufacturers concerns about interference need to be taken seriously.

Re:Car to Car Spectrum is needed.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with this article is people have no idea why the car manufacturers are upset, all they see is some big corporation opposing the release of more unlicensed public spectrum (and some sensationalist WIFI BS by bloggers). Or course this draws out the communists among us that want all corporations to go away.

This all fails to miss the entire point of why the Auto companies are opposing this. This spectrum is directly adjacent to spectrum allocated for intercar communication. What is intercar communication? It's spectrum that was allocated a number of years ago to allow direct communication between vehicles. What is the point of that? Well one of the key aspects of this spectrum is that without it you don't have reliable inter-car communication which will greatly hamper self driving cars.

See, if you are going to have self driving cars those cars need to be able to communicate with each other, they need to tell the cars around them that they need to change lanes, or that they are breaking. The holy grail of self driving cars is a situation where cars are driving 70MPH with about 2 feet between them. This will greatly increase the density of cars and allow the freeways to operate about 200% more efficiently than now. But for that all to work that cars have to tell each other what they are doing so the other vehicles can react. Even with no perception-reaction time for computers you will greatly decrease the possible efficiency if the cars can't communicate real time. The only way to make this safe is dedicated spectrum with low interference.

If we have thousands of WIFI signals in adjacent spectrum there will be so much interference that the systems won't be reliable, the result will either be safety problems or drastically reduced efficiency. Self driving cars are a holy grail of ITS (intelligent transportation systems) that has been being pursued since the early 90's. It will result in freeways that are so much more efficient than today that you could fit 3-4 times the number of cars in the same freeway without any slow downs or rush hour traffic jams. Not only that but you could read a book while driving to work.

We don't want to impede or endanger self driving cars. The car manufacturers concerns about interference need to be taken seriously.

You know what would likely see considerable gains on the freeways, as well as reducing noise and environmental pollution, and our dependency on foreign oil?

Staying off the fucking road altogether and working from home.

Seems bandwidth concerns might just be a wee bit beyond this bullshit self-driving Utopia that everyone keeps yammering about. Self-driving cars? Yeah OK, I'm still holding my breath for IPv6...

Re:Car to Car Spectrum is needed.

[pubwvj]

"The holy grail of self driving cars is a situation where cars are driving 70MPH with about 2 feet between them."

I will read the newspaper stories in the future about the incredibly massive pileups of enormous numbers of self-driving cars on your highways.

Self-driving cars need to also be using vision, radar, sonar - all their senses. Relying on just one sense is folly. The reality of the world is that not everyone will play nice and they'll have to be able to adapt to that, or die.

Any self-driving cars can't adapt to radio interference then they will die off, litter along the road of technological progress. The driving force will be the litigation against the self-driving cars that crash.

Re:Car to Car Spectrum is needed.

[c0lo]

Not only that but you could read a book while been driven to work.

FTFY. (I couldn't: motion sickness. Out of boredom, I'll drive the car instead of being driven; therefore the car makers' holy grail is of no consequence to me).

Re:Car to Car Spectrum is needed.

[Kreigaffe]

Self-driving cars.

It's just fucking fusion. 20 years out, eternally. Worse, it's a bad fucking idea in the first place.

I don't want drivers on the road paying LESS attention to driving.

There is no situation where a 2 foot following distance at 70mph will be safe. Jesus fucking Christ himself might be controlling those cars, that's still an unsafe distance. There's too many things that could *just happen*, and cause many many collisions. It's a bad deal.

Many people never deal with that kind of congestion, either. So what do they care?

Re:Car to Car Spectrum is needed.

[c0lo]

Yeah OK, I'm still holding my breath for IPv6...

Maybe paradoxically, methinks self-driven cars has chances to speed the adoption of IPv6 in the context of "the internet of things".
(you know? the internet where there's a site called "bonnetface"... and "honker", and google-drive+)

Re:Car to Car Spectrum is needed.

[Skapare]

Shit happens. The car ahead of you can not only go into a crazy stop, but even flip around as it happens. The car behind might not get too much more than the spacing distance to get stopped. 70MPH with 2 foot spacing is just not something a vehicle of any kind, much less one that runs rubber on asphalt, can do safely ... even if it is controlled by a computer. I don't want to be in such a vehicle even if it can stop fast enough to avoid a collision.

Re:Car to Car Spectrum is needed.

[Charcharodon]

You honestly think they just want it for self driving cars? All the latest "self driving" car do not use any car to car system and frankly I would want them talking since it could easily be interfered with or hacked either drastically reducing said efficiency or creating a hazard.

This is going to be use for pretty much 1 or 2 things, customer tracking for direct targeting of advertisement or services

How would they do it? Something as simple as counting how many X type of cars are in the area that go past your car, when you take it in for servicing it dumps the info.

They could put up hot spots near major traffic areas and do the same thing and upload little adds to you.

Roadside billboards are all going electronic these days, at least here in Tampa. Wouldn't advertisers just drool over the posibility of knowing exactly what year, make and model of cars drive past their signs every day. Which would give them the ability to target adds accordingly since your car usually very accurately says everything about who your are in terms of social/economic status and your age and interests.

Better yet the morons will end up putting some stupid identifier in each car, and you'd end with adds just for you. GEE! Doesn't that sound swell? I go check out EVEonline once every 6 months just to see if they are still as stupid as they were when I quit playing a couple of years ago and now I get to look at billboards on the way to work for them for the next 3 weeks. No thanks.

Besides the gov't would immediately want in on that action. NO THANKS>

Looks like if the car manufacturers get their way I'll be adding a 5gHz jammer module next to the cell phone jammer already mounted on my truck.

Re:Car to Car Spectrum is needed.

[Anonymous Coward]

thats why California just passed laws allowing self driving cars on their streets.

Re:Car to Car Spectrum is needed.

[Anonymous Coward]

OK how about listening for a change! The electromagnetic spectrum as we use it is trashed by a single signal. We rely on receivers that are not directional and as a result all someone has to do is crank up a transmitter near by and that frequency is trashed. Our superheterodyne sets make the harmonic frequency jamming possible so we get all of this nonsense about jammed bands. If we did phase locked separation with triangulation we would not only be able to open up thousands of transmitters on the same frequency but we would also be able to avoid all of the band interference as we go. This would give us directional range based reception literally a virtual location for receivers and transmitters. This would end the issue, but our addiction to 1920's technology has us in a pinch. The processes if you want to study them are fully exposed in the transmissions and hearing of Whales and Dauphins.

No we do not need to keep the band open for the Auto makers. We need to close it up entirely and quit discriminating users. They can use the super wifi like everyone else. The security issues they face will be no different. Actually opening up the band is the best thing to force them to adapt.

In the future the Auto guys will have to move on anyway. In the mean time opening up the band will give them a 100% passive range and rate radar capability if they are smart. Wifi is just an illumination for them. The more there is the better. But they are not thinking. I work in motor vehicle diagnostics and the issues of such transmissions. I have to deal with this stuff on a daily basis and I know some of the industry "experts". The best word for them is "Ex-spurt" - Definition "Ex" - A has been, "spurt" - a drip under pressure.

Re:Car to Car Spectrum is needed.

[BaldingByMicrosoft]

The problem with this article is people have no idea why the car manufacturers are upset, all they see is some big corporation opposing the release of more profit (and some sensationalist WIFI BS by bloggers). Or course this draws out the communists among us that want all corporations to go away.

This all fails to miss the entire point of why the Auto companies are opposing this. This profit is directly adjacent to profits allocated for profit. What is profit? It's profit that was allocated a number of years ago to allow profits. What is the point of that? Well one of the key aspects of this profit is that without it you don't have reliable profits which will greatly hamper profit.

See, if you are going to have profit those profits need to be able to communicate with each other, they need to tell the profits around them that they need to change lanes, or that they are breaking. The holy grail of profit is a situation where profits are driving 70MPH with about 2 feet between them. This will greatly increase the density of profits and allow the freeways to operate about 200% more efficiently than now. But for that all to work the profits have to tell each other what they are doing so the other profits can react. Even with no perception-reaction time for computers you will greatly decrease the possible efficiency if the profits can't communicate real time. The only way to make this safe is profit with low interference.

If we have thousands of WIFI signals in adjacent profits there will be so much interference that the systems won't be reliable, the result will either be safety problems or drastically reduced efficiency. Profits are a holy grail of ITS (intelligent transportation systems) that has been being pursued since the early 90's. It will result in freeways that are so much more efficient than today that you could fit 3-4 times the number of profits in the same freeway without any slow downs or rush hour traffic jams. Not only that but you could read a book while driving to work.

We don't want to impede or endanger profits. The profit manufacturers concerns about interference need to be taken seriously.

----------

FTFY. Realist, not Communist.

Re:Car to Car Spectrum is needed.

[garyebickford]

Actually two feet might be safer than a larger distance. It's hard to alter velocity very much relative to the other vehicle in two feet. In fact it's probably better to have a physical connection such as a magnetic latch between them during 'long' passages (for some definition of long) - I can see 'trains' of cars, latched together, moving in unison down the road. Occasionally one or more will disengage and move out of the train, and the train will reform. The key point is that the control paradigm is quite different. With human drivers the typical reaction time varies from 1/2 to a full second before the driver even knows there's something happening; and another 1/2 second before his/her hits the brake or turns the wheel. If all the cars 'know' the same thing at the same instant, the computers in all of them can respond essentially immediately. Compared to a four car line, this gives the last car four seconds advance capability. These four cars could *simultaneously* move out of the way, for example.

Of course there are complications - ice, loss of a wheel, things like that - but look up the 'Big Dog' robot and watch it handle ice. Or the recent quadrocopters video, balancing a stick and tossing it between quadrocopters. I think it's safe to say that we are close to a situation where the computers could handle almost any emergency faster and better than any human driver. Caveat: "once the programming gets there" - but it's there for 99% of cases, today. Ideally the software for handling this would be open source or at least open sourced between automotive makers, so everyone is on the same page and we have continuous incremental improvements. In fact that might be the single way for the makers to avoid crippling legal liability - make the collision handling software a standardized system, provided by a single government or non-profit institute that all makers must use. Include a well-defined indemnity plan so that when an error occurs, all the victims are properly taken care of and fixes put in place - all cars automatically updated with new software.

There were successful experiments done in the 1990s in the San Diego area, where (IIRC) six Buicks followed each other down a specially prepared section of highway, two feet apart. Of course that's not the same as typical real life emergencies etc. but it was done during a variety of traffic conditions. Each car had a 'driver' just in case, but IIRC only the front driver actually did anything during the tests. Then there are the Google self-driving cars, which have already been approved in CA or NV (I don't recall which). And Red Whittaker's work at CMU's Field Robotics Center, and Stanford, and a couple of European institutions.

Re:Car to Car Spectrum is needed.

[GrumpySteen]

read a book while been driven to work

FTFY

Being.

If you're going to fix someone's sentence, at least do it right.

Re:Car to Car Spectrum is needed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or course this draws out the communists among us that want all corporations to go away.

Maybe starting your argument with name calling isn't the best thing to do? Car companies are the dotcom companies of the 40s and 50s. You don't have to be a pinko communist to see how they companies buy politicians and how much crony capitalism is going on. To ignore that in any debate is to be a total moron. See, you end with the insults asshat.

Re:Car to Car Spectrum is needed.

[GuB-42]

Self-driving cars certainly must adapt to radio interference and use all their senses but this is no reason to make one of these senses less reliable.
For the same reason that even if we don't absolutely need break lights it is no reason to make them less reliable.

Why?

[Charcharodon]

I don't want other drivers, much less their cars talking on cell phones.

Besides I highly do not like the idea at all of designing systems that would involve car to car systems in the first place.

Mostly due to privacy, because I just know the morons will put identifiers into each car, and just the simple fact a bored teenager with simple computer and electronics skills would have a hayday messing with people for fun. Anything else like transmitting say diagnostics info for service, etc would not need it's own private spectrum anyway.

car 2 car comm = bad idea anyway

[WaffleMonster]

I have no problem declaring (out of blissfull ignorance) any reason one invents whereby they think 5ghz vechicle to vechicle communication is a good idea is actually not such a great idea upon closer inspection.

Hopefully with more spectrum in 5ghz ISM FCC also plans to allow higher transmitting power so it can be practically utilized.

Re:car 2 car comm = bad idea anyway

[CHIT2ME]

OK, you have this long string of cars doing 70 mph with 2 ft. spacing. What if car #3 in line has a blowout? Do you really believe that the next 5, 10, or 15 cars in line, even with their uber fast computer control, will be able to stop in time to prevent a mega car pile-up? I started driving mechanized vehicles at 6 years old. Since then I've become a stead-fast supporter of safe following distances. If the car manufacturers want this spectrum, they should pony up the cash!

Re:car 2 car comm = bad idea anyway

[GuB-42]

Yes, it could work. The key for this system to work is to make sure that to follow a car closely, you should check constantly (let's say within 10ms) that the next car is OK.
A blowout doesn't stop a car instantly, in fact, few things can stop a car faster than breaking. In the event of a blowout, the computer can quickly notice that something went wrong and signal an emergency to break all the other cars behind it and those coming the opposite way. All cars will then start breaking at the same time, relying on their internal distance sensors and ABS like systems to release the breaks when the car behind it comes too close. Because the cars constantly check each other, a failure is unlikely.