Deeplinks Blog posts about Open Wireless
In a win for the open source community, router maker TP-Link will be required to allow consumers to install third-party firmware on their wireless routers, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced Monday. The announcement comes on the heels of a settlement requiring TP-Link to pay a $200,000 fine for failing to properly limit their devices' transmission power on the 2.4GHz band to within regulatory requirements. On its face, new rules about open source firmware don't seem to have much to do with TP-Link's compliance problems. But the FCC's new rule helps fix an unintended consequence of a policy the agency made last year, which had led to open source developers being locked out of wireless routers entirely.
FCC will not seek to ban free software from wireless routers, according to a clarification it made earlier this month on a rulemaking related to radio devices. An earlier draft of the official proposal included a specific reference to device manufacturers restricting installation of the open-source project DD-WRT.
“Kenya to require users of public Wi-Fi to register with government,” reads a July 1 Ars Technica headline. At first glance, the east African country’s proposed regulations appeared to extend their reach beyond even that broad subset of Kenyan Internet users. According to quotes from officials included in the article, the new rules would require all users of any device with wireless networking capabilities, not just public Wi-Fi routers, to register their equipment with either their Internet service providers or the Kenya Network Information Centre (KENIC).
Even correcting for what seems to be overbroad interpretation of the final regulations, Kenya's plans risk invading the privacy of the majority of its non-mobile Internet users, as well as chasing legitimate anonymous speakers from the country's Internet.
The vision of a world of shared open wireless is a compelling one—it means that wherever you go in an urban or other covered area, the connected devices that you own now (and new devices that are today only on the drawing board) will enjoy immediate, seamless, private, and free access to the global Internet. But such a world might exclude Europe, depending on the outcome of a pending case there that calls the viability of open wireless networks into question. EFF and its partners have formulated an open letter—which you can read here or below—presenting our views on why a result that threatens open wireless would be a serious loss to innovators, small businesses, travelers, emergency services and users at large.
For the past few years, EFF and a coalition of other organizations has been campaigning for more and better Open Wireless networks. Unlocked, password-free wireless networks are in many respects the most convenient, efficient, and privacy-protective way to access the Internet, and running one is a considerate and neighbourly thing to do. But typical router hardware does not support open wireless very well, making it tricky or impossible for households to share some portion of their bandwidth without potentially slowing down their own connections.
This post explores what the essential features that make for a good open router, and three paths could get us there: out-of-the-box support from router manufacturers; standalone firmware; and features in open source router projects like OpenWRT.
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