Asus locking down routers to comply with new FCC rules

[Bagman]

What happens if someone like netgear or asus sticks two fingers up at the FCC, do they get withdrawn from shops? or just lose the FCC approval badge noone cares about? FCC approval might get a rep in 5 years for been FCC approved = avoid, gimped wireless

Like I said upstream, you have two models, one with gimped firmware, and one without. They can be the same hardware, but give them different model numbers, and just sell the gimped one in the US, and the working one everywhere else.

It wouldn't be the first time a company has sold regionalised products to meet local laws. I don't see why it's so hard and why Asus are so willing to screw over their non-US customers. If the code already checks the region settings on the CFE, how difficult is it to only lock to the CFE region if it's US? One simple string match is trivial.

 

[Deleted member 22229]

It sure would be nice to hear some official word on this from Asus they have to be reading around here.

 

[DrTeeth]

If the US wants it locked it down, then yes they will all be locked down. This is common in manufacturing but that does not make it any less frustrating for countries that do not have US regulations. This will likely hold true for any and all equipment that is sold internationally, and that includes just about every manufacturer.

You are missing the whole point by a mile I'm afraid. I cannot speak for anybody else, but I for 1 would not mind my router being locked at all as long as it was correctly localised. People have this gripe as they have to fiddle to get their routers to work legally in their locale as Asus has messed up the issue big time and locking it will just hack people off.

Many European users lose out on many channels and lower than legal power outputs.

I am staying with 374.43 for the foreseeable future. Just a heads up, retailers do not have a clue about this issue.

 

[Deleted member 27741]

No need to get all red fonty on us, dude.

Missing the point? What is the point, exactly, then?

That you don't mind your router being locked as long as it is properly localized? Gee, what a help that is for those whose routers are not.

 

[Deleted member 22229]

If the US wants it locked it down, then yes they will all be locked down. This is common in manufacturing but that does not make it any less frustrating for countries that do not have US regulations. This will likely hold true for any and all equipment that is sold internationally, and that includes just about every manufacturer.

Also, if you think commenting to the FCC or anyone else will help, consider that a top FCC official essentially dismissed the over a million comments on net neutrality saying that “A lot of these comments are one paragraph, two paragraphs, they don’t have much substance beyond, ‘we want strong Net Neutrality.”

So basically a million people told them they don't want the FCC borking our internets and they come back with this. We want strong net neutrality is pretty easy understand, if you are not a top FCC official, that is.

And remember this the 3 top dogs at the FCC 2 worked for comcast and the other for charter cable and yes Obama man hired them. I thought the FCC was allowing higher output on some channels on the 5 ghz band what happened to that ?

 

[GoNz0]

No need to get all red fonty on us, dude.

Missing the point? What is the point, exactly, then?

That you don't mind your router being locked as long as it is properly localized? Gee, what a help that is for those whose routers are not.

he has every right as it is so damn annoying.

As soon as I get a 2nd 68u here I am going to spend more time editing the cfe to see if I can region lock it to UK (GB) and get the channels I need.

 

[KevTech]

I suggest you contact your government telecommunications and see what they have to say about it.

Links: http://transition.fcc.gov/mb/audio/bickel/world-govt-telecom.html

 

[RMerlin]

Another similar thread from the Asuswrt-Merlin forum has been merged into this one.

 

[Deleted member 22229]

I suggest you contact your government telecommunications and see what they have to say about it.

Links: http://transition.fcc.gov/mb/audio/bickel/world-govt-telecom.html

The FCC is about as worthless as contacting Comcast support. I had a illegal cb'er ripping my tv and stereos to shreds for months contacting the FCC was no help despite the fact the station was operating with more then allowed wattage. I had to go over and put a stop to it myself.

 

[bits]

concur. this isn't something that only affects asus. everybody that sells wifi will have to conform one way or another. asus is just first out the door probably because they were most recently sued by netgear. jumping ship to about any other manufacturer is just likely to leave you with a device that's illegal to use by US citizens because their product is EOL and their manufacturers CBA to do anything about it.

The problem is not the lock, it is that Asus have not set the right country code in these devices.

Every other device I own has correctly worked out it country code by itself or was correctly set from factory.
Eg numerous mobile phones, previous routers such as billion, ps3, DVD players with wifi, etc.

My rt-ac68u is the first device I owned that I had to manually go set to the correct region.

Asus have created this problem simply because they didn't initialize these products correctly to the right region. No one would be complaining if there router purchased from their local store was set correctly out of the box.

 

[bits]

I don't see why it's so hard and why Asus are so willing to screw over their non-US customers. If the code already checks the region settings on the CFE, how difficult is it to only lock to the CFE region if it's US? One simple string match is trivial.

That might fix Europe but doesn't fix the rest of the world. It appears all of Asia, Australia and probably Africa had their CFE set to US.
No one has seen rt-ac68u with anything other than EU or US.

 

[4Leaf]

Let's all keep hating guys!

Let 'em hear the noise!

 

[bits]

Also bitching on here won't fix anything.
Everyone annoyed by this problem must bitch to Asus and ask them how we can correctly set our WiFi region on these devices now.

 

[Deleted member 22229]

Also bitching on here won't fix anything.
Everyone annoyed by this problem must bitch to Asus and ask them how we can correctly set our WiFi region on these devices now.

Why should Asus do anything as long as the revenue keeps rolling in. Vote with your wallets and stop buying Asus routers then watch how fast something gets done.

 

[bluepoint]

How about Asus tell us when they are going to fix this, and actually do so, instead of customers hoping and praying Asus might fix it out of the goodness of their hearts for those of us that have nothing to do with the FCC.

Have you let Asus know what you feel? If every Asus owner that is in EU tell Asus how bad they've done with these domain lockout, maybe they do something about it. If no one will complain nothing will be done. This isn't about FCC, it's about Asus.

 

[KevTech]

The FCC is about as worthless as contacting Comcast support. I had a illegal cb'er ripping my tv and stereos to shreds for months contacting the FCC was no help despite the fact the station was operating with more then allowed wattage. I had to go over and put a stop to it myself.

If you would have clicked the link I posted you have seen it was just links to all countries telecommunications offices websites.

Had nothing to do with the fcc just links on the fcc website.

 

[KevTech]

Why should Asus do anything as long as the revenue keeps rolling in. Vote with your wallets and stop buying Asus routers then watch how fast something gets done.

And Netgear, Cisco, D-Link, etc.

All are going to do what Asus has done sooner or later.

 

[sinshiva]

The problem is not the lock, it is that Asus have not set the right country code in these devices.

Every other device I own has correctly worked out it country code by itself or was correctly set from factory.
Eg numerous mobile phones, previous routers such as billion, ps3, DVD players with wifi, etc.

My rt-ac68u is the first device I owned that I had to manually go set to the correct region.

Asus have created this problem simply because they didn't initialize these products correctly to the right region. No one would be complaining if there router purchased from their local store was set correctly out of the box.

i just checked ccode on the cfe on my e2000 and my e2500 and both were set for 0. of course, i have ddwrt on the e2000 and tomato on the e2500, but the bootloader on both shouldn't have changed afaik. (both bought in te US)

 

[Deleted member 22229]

And Netgear, Cisco, D-Link, etc.

All are going to do what Asus has done sooner or later.

I dont know any solutions to this problem. I have not heard any formal complaints of home routers interfering with other equipment other then other routers so i dont understand the big hurry for all these changes. The FCC sure dont care about power restrictions with ham radios or cb radios so why all the interest in home routers all of a sudden ?

 

[toor]

Why should Asus do anything as long as the revenue keeps rolling in. Vote with your wallets and stop buying Asus routers then watch how fast something gets done.

Good luck with that; the average joe has his router channel set to auto from the defaults and doesnt have a clue about any missing channels. Think of how many people you know who dont have a clue about the router in their house. Our small 1-2% (if even that) makes no difference to them.