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EU's Plan To Ban Sale of User-Moddable RF Devices Draws Widespread Condemnation (theregister.co.uk)
Reader simpz writes: The Register is reporting that the EU is looking to block users from tinkering the firmware/software of their RF devices. This seems to have been very under reported, with a fairly short consultation period that has now expired. It could force manufacturers to lock down phones and routers etc to stop you from installing the likes of Lineage OS or OpenWRT. The way this is written it could stop devices like laptops or Raspberry Pi's having their software changed. From the report: The controversy centres on Article 3(3)(i) of the EU Radio Equipment Directive, which was passed into law back in 2014. However, an EU working group is now about to define precisely which devices will be subject to the directive -- and academics, researchers, individual "makers" and software companies are worried that their activities and business models will be outlawed. Article 3(3)(i) states that RF gear sold in the EU must support "certain features in order to ensure that software can only be loaded into the radio equipment where the compliance of the combination of the radio equipment and software has been demonstrated." If the law is implemented in its most potentially harmful form, no third-party firmware could be installed onto something like a home router, for example.
...because if everyone can "mod" the devices to let's say "outside" their designated frequency range, we're in for real trouble on the airwaves.
Before the non-radio amateur crowd thinks I'm on the "powers that be" side here, then I've got to tell you where I come from on this. I've been building and modifying radio transmission equipment pretty much all my life as an hobby, and a wet dream of mine as a kid, was to freely be able to build any kind of transmitter and receiver I wanted to, regardless of laws and regulations, but that's not very practical in the real world, the only way to do this legally (and even know what you're actually doing) is to become an electrical engineer with a degree in RF technology, or become an licensed radio amateur, why is that you might ask, you might even ask what the relevancy here is, well, it's not simple to explain - but I'll try my darnedest to explain it:
Imagine you have a piece of equipment that CAN go outside its designated range, and you mod it so you can transmit on a broader range, say - increasing the bandwidth so you can get more throughput and cover more frequency "ground" so to speak.
This can and will create all kinds of hell for existing communication devices, maybe even those used for emergency, alarm systems, medical equipment and much more.
The reason there's an requirement for a technical license to even be able to operate in certain bands (especially with modified devices, modified by you and other experimenters) is that through that technical knowledge you'll gain by becoming a licensed radio amateur, you'll learn how to deal with making filters to prohibit spurious emissions to leak through your own equipment, you'll also learn respect for design and how to avoid making serious mistakes on the airwaves, whether this is digital or simply as in the olden days "analog" with speech / Morse-code (which is very similar to digital transmissions, except, very slow and ..old), you'll respect the band-plans already put aside for experimental use (which you're free to use, under respect for the rules, as long as you actually know what you're doing).
Now, imagine you modified a transmitter to cover so much of the bands that you interfere with medical equipment in a nearby band (frequency), now we have a real problem on our hands that can actually cause lives to be in danger, even if you don't notice anything yourself. You'll be creating all kinds of confusion for those using this equipment, and eventually get caught by your country's FCC team who constantly monitor all frequencies for unauthorized traffic, interference etc. It's hard to explain this to laymen who doesn't know the technology behind this, it's no joke - there are entire careers made out of understanding RF spurious / parasitic emissions, especially those designed in SOHO devices that has to meet the strictest FCC rules in order to be released to the market. Even small modifications can create equipment to misbehave, and you'll have equipment that no longer meets the criteria for acceptable spurious emissions into our wide spectrum of band-plans.
Radio amateurs have for the longest time, been the pioneers of such technology, and there's a reason we're allowed to do experiments like this, because we're qualified to do so (not everyone of course, some I've met, sadly - doesn't even understand the basics, but - at least they had to go through a long course learning about the basics, so they'll at least keep within the legal boundaries of what they CAN and CAN NOT do on the air).
Now - modify the software of your routers ALL you want, this isn't the issue, the issue is when you start modifying your hardware (especially the RF part) to go beyond what it was designed to do, even if you're good at coding - doesn't qualify you to be a RF technician that fully understands this, and this can be a dangerous combo).
RF interference is a real thing, and it's dangerous - only proper knowledge can remedy this, and there must be certain requirements met to ha
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
This isn't the big bad government trying to take away your freedoms. I fully support the FCC on this (and I'm pretty close to Libertarian so that means something coming from me).
The issue is weather radar. Shortly after the FCC opened up the 5 GHz band for unlicensed use, terminal doppler weather radar was invented in response to several airliner crashes due to adverse weather conditions. Unfortunately, it relies on frequencies smack dab in the middle of the open 5 GHz band. So the FCC took the unusual step of revising their rules which opened up those frequencies
The intermediate 5 GHz channels were reclassified as DFS - dynamic frequency selection. Devices are allowed to use those frequencies, but they have to monitor for TDWR. If they detected weather radar in use, they had to switch to a different channel. A few devices actually do this and check to see if weather radar is in use. Most manufacturers just took the easy way out and blocked out channels 50-144 entirely in the firmware. That's why many 5 GHz devices only support channels 36-48 and 149-165. (This can cause the mysterious situation you might have encountered, where some devices can see your 5 GHz network while others can't. Your router supports DFS and has picked a channel between 50-144. Devices which support DFS can see the router. Devices which have blocked off channels 50-144 cannot.)
Early open source router firmwares completely ignored DFS. They would spam over the DFS frequencies, interfering with weather radar at airports if someone nearby happened to load the firmware onto their router. DD-WRT added support for DFS (it's the "weather radar" checkbox in the 5 GHz wireless settings, although it really should be checked by default).. If you install third party firmware and use the 5 GHz band, do the responsible thing and enable this functionality if you're going to enable channels 50-144. Unfortunately, some idiots didn't do this, degrading the effectiveness of hundreds of millions of dollars invested into TDWR equipment. It was enough of a concern that the FCC began investigating the need to regulate or ban third party firmware. That's what this is all about. The government doesn't hate you running third party firmware on your router, they're just trying to protect people flying in airplanes from needlessly being killed.
This is why we can't have nice things - a few idiots ruin it for everyone else. I had lots of fun with lawn darts as a kid, but we always treated the target area as if it were a shooting range. Here's an example of what happens to TDWR when an idiot blasts their router in the TDWR frequencies. The unauthorized broadcast shows up as a wedge-shaped area spanning a few degrees and extending to the edge of the radar image, completely obscuring any weather in the wedge. Multiply that by a few dozen open source routers near the airport and it becomes a major impediment.
The cleaner solution would've been for the FCC to simply close the 5 GHz band and reserve it entirely for TDWR. But that would've made billions of dollars of wireless equipment obsolete. So the FCC tried their best to find a compromise between the needs of people who already owned 5 GHz wireless equipment, and the flying public. It's the open source firmware authors who were (initially) acting like jerks here, not the FCC.