FCC raised power limit on 5Ghz

[joltdude]

Wonder if this will have any impact on future firmwares from ASUS... Might help some with range issues in the later firmware...

http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1246109

 

[thiggins]

Wonder if this will have any impact on future firmwares from ASUS... Might help some with range issues in the later firmware...

http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1246109

This has been discussed in earlier threads.

Any product changes that change RF characteristics requires resubmission for FCC Certification. This is a costly process. Today's RF designs have finely tuned hardware with very tweaked firmware to support max performance without violating all the FCC specs including out-of-band radiation.

Bottom line is it's unlikely you'll see older designs with higher power limits enabled.

 

[Deleted member 22229]

I just hook my router to big old tube amplifier now I can see my SSID in others cities but no matter how hard I try I can't seem to connect with my tablet.

 

[ChristineBCW]

(snort-laff)

Yeah... I wonder if mine can see yours, though? And yours, mine? Of course, I'm not relying on tubes. (I've got Hubby pedaling faster on his Gilligans Island Memorial Power Generator instead. That should work the same, though, yes?)

Mostly, though, I hope this next wave of devices come with the mail-back tag so we can ship all of our landfill items to Mfr CEO's backyard for their storage.

 

[joltdude]

This has been discussed in earlier threads.

Any product changes that change RF characteristics requires resubmission for FCC Certification. This is a costly process. Today's RF designs have finely tuned hardware with very tweaked firmware to support max performance without violating all the FCC specs including out-of-band radiation.

Bottom line is it's unlikely you'll see older designs with higher power limits enabled.

Honestly I missed the thread on this discussion.. Still think its of somewhat interest because it means they will have to somehow delineate new products from old products on the shelf... and remember Asus is pre-region locking their stuff before the mandate.. I could see it in their interest to try to sweet talk the FCC into allowing the updated specs for their early integration.. Just goes to show how backwards the US is...This is the same BS they pulled with region coding on DVDs

 

[jlake]

Honestly I missed the thread on this discussion.. Still think its of somewhat interest because it means they will have to somehow delineate new products from old products on the shelf... and remember Asus is pre-region locking their stuff before the mandate.. I could see it in their interest to try to sweet talk the FCC into allowing the updated specs for their early integration.. Just goes to show how backwards the US is...This is the same BS they pulled with region coding on DVDs

I'm not sure if I would criticize the bureaucrats in the US. The US is still about capitalism. Router manufacturers want you to buy a new router. Router manufacturers would probably complain if the FCC allowed them to update older hardware.

Router manufacturers don't sell routers out of the goodness of their heart. They're trying to make a profit. There's not a lot of profit in firmware updates. Firmware updates can help with loyalty and future sales, but not immediate profit.

 

[thiggins]

Honestly I missed the thread on this discussion.

Thread is http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=17836

I have seen no indication of manufacturers trying to market higher power in the low 5 GHz band as a differentiating feature. NETGEAR's R7500 and R8000 and ASUS' RT-AC87U/R support the higher power.

You won't see this in older routers for the reasons I gave. The FCC can't be "sweet talked" either products meet spec or they don't.

As jlake points out, manfs have no incentive to go back and re-engineer old products. And sure as hell not for the slim margins they get. The history in wireless is new things WPA, WPS, Wi-Fi Direct (still waiting) get baked into new stuff and very rarely back-engineered into products in the field.

 

[joltdude]

whatever. I could see vendors given a break on the cost of recertification.. Thats what I'm implying. And there's profit in being able to market an already produced product that's competitive against a new one...

 

[joltdude]

A lot of this is due to the fact consumers are opposed to a subscription fee.. Just see the discontinued but excellent Zonealarm / checkpoint Za100 for instance

 

[RMerlin]

Thread is http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=17836

I have seen no indication of manufacturers trying to market higher power in the low 5 GHz band as a differentiating feature. NETGEAR's R7500 and R8000 and ASUS' RT-AC87U/R support the higher power.

You won't see this in older routers for the reasons I gave. The FCC can't be "sweet talked" either products meet spec or they don't.

As jlake points out, manfs have no incentive to go back and re-engineer old products. And sure as hell not for the slim margins they get. The history in wireless is new things WPA, WPS, Wi-Fi Direct (still waiting) get baked into new stuff and very rarely back-engineered into products in the field.

Legalese aside, wouldn't Broadcom need to come up with a revised chip anyway, or would a simple PA upgrade be enough for a design to support higher power output?

 

[sfx2000]

Legalese aside, wouldn't Broadcom need to come up with a revised chip anyway, or would a simple PA upgrade be enough for a design to support higher power output?

Maybe - from a MAC/Baseband, it's no change - it's purely at the PA - and some PA's may perform better than others at the higher limits - knowing though that PA's were designed with older Limits in mind.

So from a practical perspective, I wouldn't expect a change to allow legacy gear to "power up" to the new limits.

For FCC, this is not a permissive change, or a deviation/variant based on the granted cert - it would certainly be a full-on retest, and this becomes a business issue - why invest into a product that is already in maint mode, when the effort can be better done moving forward - maint mode, the ROI is a long tail, with zero margin for a change like this.

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