more on The FCC claims exclusive jurisdiction over the unlicensed Wi-Fi spectrum

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Brett Glass <brett () lariat org>
Date: June 26, 2004 9:36:34 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net, Ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
Cc: richard.wiggins () gmail com
Subject: Re: [IP] more on The FCC claims exclusive jurisdiction over 
the unlicensed Wi-Fi spectrum

At 04:06 PM 6/26/2004, Richard Wiggins wrote:

> While this reads like a clear victory for the little guy, it isn't
> unalloyed good news for the small tenants of large organizations.
> Take the case of a university campus, for instance.  Students (and
> their parents) are demanding Wi-Fi access in common areas.  Does this
> mean the university (landlord) can't regulate use of access points by
> dorm residents (tenants)?  If every student has an $50 access point in
> her dorm room, students in the adjacent study lounge will find chaos
> and interference instead of the campus Wi-Fi service.

The University might be able to prohibit such activities as part
of the acceptable use policy for the network. While the FCC says
that you can have an access point, under such a policy you couldn't
hook it up to the University network (which means that it would be
of little use).

> Professional grade access points cooperate with each other; some will
> even lower signal strength on one access point and raise it on its
> peer so as to load-balance.

No Wi-Fi access points of which I am aware do this. It would be
nice if they did, but there is no provision in the Wi-Fi standard
for it. So, any such implementation would be proprietary and
would only work if all of the access points were from the same
manufacturer.

Some proprietary, non-Wi-Fi radio systems do have such a feature.
Motorola's Canopy system, for example, synchronizes transmissions
from its access points by using the precise timing signals provided
by GPS. Alas, the cooperation is only within the Canopy system. The
system as a whole is discourteous to other radio systems operating
on the same band and in fact can make it unusable by others.

I've long been a proponent of mandatory spectrum etiquettes, but so
far the FCC has only instituted them on one little-used band which
is not well suited for wireless broadband.

--Brett Glass

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