[ale] no 802.11g for Linux?

[James P. Kinney III]

On Thu, 2003-05-22 at 18:48, Jim Philips wrote:
> This discussion:
> 
> http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0304.3/1120.html
> 
> claims that there won't be any open source drivers for 802.11g wireless cards, 
> because they can operate at any frequency and the feds don't want people 
> using them to hack into frequencies reserved for them. Does anybody know more 
> about this? Is this the straight dope? Or is this person full of it?

I've seen this argument before. It is both right and crap. It's right in
that there are parts of the chip controllers that they don't want
_anyone_ to have access to. Not all of the modulation is built into the
hardware. There are other frequency hopping aspects that are also
software controllable. That make for an upgradeable device. 

But some of those software controls, specifically the frequency hopping,
makes for a system that does not comply to the spec (such as it is) so
that aspect the FCC does not want tinkered with.  Yet the winders crowd
has dissassemblers and bright (well, one or two at least) people and
they will figure out these loopholes. So I don't give that argument much
credit.

No chip maker in their right mind would publicly sell a device that has
the capability of broadcasting into military bandwidth. The FCC would
NEVER approve such a device. So that argument is pure crap.

I think the major smoke screen is that the 802.11g spec is still a cloud
and not a hard document yet. That makes all 802.11g devices very high
profile IP collateral. That is why there are no specs on them.

I would be perfectly happy if the chip makers would write a module, or
even a user-space driver. 54Mbps sounds pretty sweet.

-- 
James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244                    \.___________________________./
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics) <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
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