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Ask Slashdot: How Can You Avoid Routers With Locked Firmware?
thejynxed writes:
Awhile ago the FCC in the USA implemented a rule that required manufacturers to restrict end-users from tampering with the radio outputs on wi-fi routers. It was predicted that manufacturers would take the lazy way out by locking down the firmware/bootloaders of the routers entirely instead of partitioning off access to the radio transmit power and channel ranges. This has apparently proven to be the case, as even now routers that were previously marketed as "Open Source Ready" or "DD-WRT Compatible" are coming with locked firmware.
In my case, having noticed this trend, I purchased three routers from Belkin, Buffalo, and Netgear in Canada, the UK, and Germany respectively, instead of the USA, and the results: All three routers had locked firmware/bootloaders, with no downgrade rights and no way to install Tomato, DD-WRT, OpenWRT, etc. It seems the FCC rule is an example of the wide-reaching effect of US law on the products sold in other nations, etc. So, does anyone know a good source of unlocked routers or other technical information on how to bypass this ridiculous outcome of FCC over-reach and manufacturer laziness?
The FCC later specified that they were not trying to block Open Source firmware modifications -- so leave your best suggestions in the comments. How can you avoid routers with locked firmware?
In my case, having noticed this trend, I purchased three routers from Belkin, Buffalo, and Netgear in Canada, the UK, and Germany respectively, instead of the USA, and the results: All three routers had locked firmware/bootloaders, with no downgrade rights and no way to install Tomato, DD-WRT, OpenWRT, etc. It seems the FCC rule is an example of the wide-reaching effect of US law on the products sold in other nations, etc. So, does anyone know a good source of unlocked routers or other technical information on how to bypass this ridiculous outcome of FCC over-reach and manufacturer laziness?
The FCC later specified that they were not trying to block Open Source firmware modifications -- so leave your best suggestions in the comments. How can you avoid routers with locked firmware?
It's a fantastic router platform, supports oodles of hardware, and can run on cheap machines. For instance: Start here use a 5600 series Xeon and the smallest amount of RAM and HDD you can get, and you've got a killer router capable of handling much greater than gigabit traffic. If you need Wireless as well, you can either add a low-profile 802.11 card, or buy a cheap home "router" and run it in Access Point only mode, which will put it behind your firewall (and thus safe from internet-based hack attacks), rather than it being your firewall and vulnerable.
Do you want to foot the bill for massive army of personnel and equipment required to hunt for signals in the tens of thousands square miles covered by TWDR systems?
And before you say it... no, waiting for hundreds of people to die in a plane crash because interference prevented a TWDR system from detecting wind shear conditions is NOT an acceptable solution.
There's no particular reason to play politics on this.
When you get FCC certification, you are certifying to the government that your product meets their requirements for EM emissions and reception (intentional or otherwise). This isn't new, it's been around since before, I would guess, everyone reading this was born. By allowing customers to go monkey with those settings you can no longer give any such certification. It makes some sense for the FCC to stop this, and honestly I wondered how long before they did since most people doing this are dramatically boosting the transmission levels on their routers.
Now it may be that you think that the burden is on the government to find and stop people who are breaking the rules individually, rather than putting the burden on manufacturers, and I agree with the point in principle, but in practice the entire point of the FCC is to ensure the airwaves are shared and we don't end up with broadcast power wars. I do not know of many people who after making changes to their radio settings, also go put their router in a testing chamber and ensure that it is still compliant, not only at 5GHz (for example), but that harmonics are not leaking out at other frequencies that they did not intend (in some cases also due to lazy electronics design). Those labs cost some bucks, so unless you happen to have access to one, and your boss happens to look the other way when you use it for personal use rather than billing a customer, its hard to do. Hunting down each and every person who is breaking the rules is very expensive, and I think we can all agree we don't want to pay more in taxes for this. Therefore putting the burden on mfg's is a cheap solution that solves their problem. I'm not sure why we would want to fight the FCC on this.
The fact that manufacturers are ALSO locking out the non-radio facing firmware is an entirely different issue that the FCC is not responsible for. That part needs to be fought, but hopefully some manufacturer will see some money in doing it right. Shipping WiFi firmware is so universally awful that almost anything else is better.
I know. What is with these people obeying the laws of physics when choosing spectrum. How dare they!
most people doing this are dramatically boosting the transmission levels on their routers.
General rule of thumb: if you can't get a good signal at 15dBm on 2.4 and 18dBm on 5GHZ, do not try to go higher. Install more APs closer to your clients. Otherwise you are just damaging the spectrum. The higher levels are really meant for when you have real antennas on both ends, like a WDS. You can't make cheap client antennas better by shouting at them. Also, you should have a compelling reason to deploy 5GHz outdoors, even using factory firmware... you are a lot less likely to do something destructive fumbling around with the 2.4GHz band outdoors. Partly because it is already ruined, and partly because it doesn't have to worry about radar.
Many settings that are not strictly RF-related are bunched in with the RF settings, and can use some tuning, and are not settable from factory firmware -- which you should never run anyway because it is full of junk plug-and-play services and will stop receiving security updates long before you are done using the AP.
Vendors have no incentive to separate out these settings in hardware, nor support them in software, nor continue to support an AP after it is out of warranty, as then they are just decreasing demand for their latest models.
Most people who install Open Source firmware are after features not related to RF, few people feel any need to install custom firmware on the WiFi card (more on some models than on others) and what special WiFi card settings they are looking to alter are things like beacon formats and timing, noise floor detection, etc.
Refusal to publish solid specs from which open source drivers can be written probably account for the majority of issues where RF parameters are set up wrong.
Especially, vendors shipping product whose EEPROM settings are wrong and then kludging things back together in their binary-only drivers, rather than reprogramming the EEPROM on upgrade, might be the number one cause.
Someone had to do it.