FCC Reaches Settlement with TP-Link in Wi-Fi Router Investigation • Hacker News Board

Re: FCC Reaches Settlement with TP-Link in Wi-Fi Router Investigation

#21

Post by _RPM » Mon, Aug 01, 2016, 10:48 PM UTC

bsamuels wrote: post #20

_RPM wrote: post #11

One time I was up for like 36 hours, and I had just gotten a new router from Linksys. I started reading the privacy policy and got really freaked out that they were tracking every website I visited through some kind of HTTP/S proxy. I wouldn't doubt it because in their policy they paint some pretty broad strokes with their words. Their "Smart WiFi" router phones home constantly and the web interface manager doesn't a…

I tried blocking the only third party cookie on our admin portal and the rest of the site seemed to work fine. What are you using to block the third party cookie? Also what part of the privacy policy gives you the impression of there being a proxy/something tracking the websites you visit?

When you login to the smart wifi, open your network panel, and it will phone home on a loop.

I don't recall specifics, It just made me very paranoid. Go ahead and read it for yourself. Who knows how often they phone home? I know I don't. And think about what kind of targeted advertising they could implement if they knew every website you've ever visited. Is it possible? I can't see how thinking about doing this wouldn't have been a thought in meetings with how to monetize.

Re: FCC Reaches Settlement with TP-Link in Wi-Fi Router Investigation

#22

Post by ausjke » Mon, Aug 01, 2016, 11:00 PM UTC

So the bottom line of this settlement is:

1. You can still load openwrt etc to TP-Link routers.

2. TP-Link needs to do something(e.g. set hard-limit on TX power in some binary blob or something) to make sure nobody can increase Wifi output power above the "safe" threshold.

Now as someone said in the thread, UBNT might have the real high-power WIFI devices(e.g. point-to-point outdoor) that can cause real interference to airplanes etc, it seems UBNT is not impacted at all, which is odd.

Re: FCC Reaches Settlement with TP-Link in Wi-Fi Router Investigation

#23

Post by wtallis » Mon, Aug 01, 2016, 11:04 PM UTC

ausjke wrote: post #22

So the bottom line of this settlement is: 1. You can still load openwrt etc to TP-Link routers. 2. TP-Link needs to do something(e.g. set hard-limit on TX power in some binary blob or something) to make sure nobody can increase Wifi output power above the "safe" threshold. Now as someone said in the thread, UBNT might have the real high-power WIFI devices(e.g. point-to-point outdoor) that can cause real interference…

I think the tricky part has always been dynamic frequency selection, where the 5GHz WiFi radio is supposed to listen for a radar chirp and switch channels if it hears one. It's my impression that the hardware typically already supports some form of maximum transmit power configuration that the Linux drivers can further restrict but not loosen on the basis of the software's regulatory domain setting.

Re: FCC Reaches Settlement with TP-Link in Wi-Fi Router Investigation

#24

Post by bsamuels » Mon, Aug 01, 2016, 11:29 PM UTC

_RPM wrote: post #21

bsamuels wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried blocking the only third party cookie on our admin portal and the rest of the site seemed to work fine. What are you using to block the third party cookie? Also what part of the privacy policy gives you the impression of there being a proxy/something tracking the websites you visit?

When you login to the smart wifi, open your network panel, and it will phone home on a loop. I don't recall specifics, It just made me very paranoid. Go ahead and read it for yourself. Who knows how often they phone home? I know I don't. And think about what kind of targeted advertising they could implement if they knew every website you've ever visited. Is it possible? I can't see how thinking about doing this would…

There's basically 4 different kinds of traffic you'll see coming out of the browser when you're viewing the admin portal.

JNAP Calls - These are used to get or set configuration settings on your router. They'll always be aimed at 192.168.1.1 (or wherever your gateway is) If you're managing your router through a cloud interface, the POSTS will be directed towards linksyssmartwifi.com

Internet Connectivity Heartbeats - These are used to figure out if you have an active internet connection. They'll be aimed at connect.linksys.com

Speedtest Requests - These requests are used to provide support for the speed test functionality. They're typically aimed at linksys.ookla.com or linksysconnect.speedtest.net and are only used to download the flash object that performs the speed test

GUI/html Requests - These are GET requests used to build the html page, aimed 192.168.1.1

However if you set up a cloud account and use the remote admin interface to change your router's settings, youll see lots of WAN-side traffic to the Linksys cloud.

Re: FCC Reaches Settlement with TP-Link in Wi-Fi Router Investigation

#25

Post by shmerl » Mon, Aug 01, 2016, 11:45 PM UTC

lmns wrote: post #17

shmerl wrote: post #6

Better to stick with those who don't need anyone to require them that. At least Linksys with Marwell chips has really open WiFi drivers (WRT1900ACS).

The last time I looked it required a proprietary binary blob. AFAIK the only free drivers which work well are ath5k and ath9k.

For firmware. The driver itself is open. I don't think even Qualcomm have open firmware for 802.11ac chips. That's an unfortunate trend. While drivers are getting more open, firmware blobs are becoming more prevalent, in GPUs, WiFi and etc.

Re: FCC Reaches Settlement with TP-Link in Wi-Fi Router Investigation

#26

Post by ausjke » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 12:53 AM UTC

wtallis wrote: post #23

ausjke wrote: post #22

So the bottom line of this settlement is: 1. You can still load openwrt etc to TP-Link routers. 2. TP-Link needs to do something(e.g. set hard-limit on TX power in some binary blob or something) to make sure nobody can increase Wifi output power above the "safe" threshold. Now as someone said in the thread, UBNT might have the real high-power WIFI devices(e.g. point-to-point outdoor) that can cause real interference…

I think the tricky part has always been dynamic frequency selection, where the 5GHz WiFi radio is supposed to listen for a radar chirp and switch channels if it hears one. It's my impression that the hardware typically already supports some form of maximum transmit power configuration that the Linux drivers can further restrict but not loosen on the basis of the software's regulatory domain setting.

I have seen high-power WIFI card with amplifiers that can do really powerful TX output and the linux drivers are free to tune that output to its physical upper limit.

Re: FCC Reaches Settlement with TP-Link in Wi-Fi Router Investigation

#27

Post by nisa » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 1:54 AM UTC

koolba wrote: post #8

Would it be possible to do any real harm (to humans, pets, etc) by increasing this power setting or would this only cause interference with other electronics? Also, which models is this for?

the big topic is weather radar on 5ghz channels at least in europe. The wifi router has to detect that and stop transmitting[1].

Besides that I don't think you can do soo much harm... on the models with pluggable antennas you pump of the power to 500mW and add some additional power through an antenna but in practice that buys you little or even does worse to your wifi... however DD-WRT allegedly got some knobs to do this and lot's of people did (higher is better!11!!) and this caused some fallout that the seemed to put the FCC into the need to intervene.

Most wifi routers you can buy max out at 100mW some do 500mW you can multiply that if you add custom antennas but then the energy is directional.

There is no harm to humans to animals, maybe eventually if you sleep and live directly (1: http://wifi-insider.com/wlan/dfs.htm

Re: FCC Reaches Settlement with TP-Link in Wi-Fi Router Investigation

#28

Post by Sanddancer » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 1:55 AM UTC

wtallis wrote: post #18

pdabbadabba wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot imagine why you're being down-voted. This isn't hypothetical; the FCC imposed these security restrictions after reports of actual interference to airport weather RADARs. https://www.fcc.gov/general/u-nii-and-tdwr-interference-enfo...

Note however that it appears that virtually all of those instances of interference were tracked down to Ubiquity point to point link devices. TP-Link's ordinary consumer access points and routers may have been out of compliance with the letter of the law, but they weren't causing actual harm to airport operations, let alone enough harm to justify banning OpenWRT.

One individual home router operating illegally won't do much to increase the noise floor, but each router operating illegally adds that much more to the background noise and makes it that much more difficult for the weather radar to function properly. So yes, they were doing harm to airport operations. It's just like light pollution -- one light won't block out the stars, but a million will.

Re: FCC Reaches Settlement with TP-Link in Wi-Fi Router Investigation

#29

Post by wtallis » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 2:08 AM UTC

shmerl wrote: post #25

lmns wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last time I looked it required a proprietary binary blob. AFAIK the only free drivers which work well are ath5k and ath9k.

For firmware. The driver itself is open. I don't think even Qualcomm have open firmware for 802.11ac chips. That's an unfortunate trend. While drivers are getting more open, firmware blobs are becoming more prevalent, in GPUs, WiFi and etc.

The really unfortunate thing is that they're putting the wrong things into the proprietary firmware. I'd be fine with signed proprietary firmware that only enforces FCC limits and regulations. That would make it harder if I wanted to sell my used equipment overseas, but wouldn't otherwise restrict my freedoms.

I'm not fine with the bottom half of the network stack being offloaded to the proprietary firmware where we can't adjust or even directly see things like how many packets it's buffering and how it handles aggregation and retransmissions.

Re: FCC Reaches Settlement with TP-Link in Wi-Fi Router Investigation

#30

Post by wtallis » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 2:39 AM UTC

Sanddancer wrote: post #28

wtallis wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note however that it appears that virtually all of those instances of interference were tracked down to Ubiquity point to point link devices. TP-Link's ordinary consumer access points and routers may have been out of compliance with the letter of the law, but they weren't causing actual harm to airport operations, let alone enough harm to justify banning OpenWRT.

One individual home router operating illegally won't do much to increase the noise floor, but each router operating illegally adds that much more to the background noise and makes it that much more difficult for the weather radar to function properly. So yes, they were doing harm to airport operations. It's just like light pollution -- one light won't block out the stars, but a million will.

Do you have specific knowledge that diffuse ground-based access points impair the narrow beam TDWRs at issue, or are you just making a broad generalization? It's a decent analogy, but I can think of quite a few differences between a short range weather radar and a radiotelescope.