the only real limit is until you start interfering with other people to the point they notice and complain. it's not like the FCC has vans roving the streets looking for unlicensed TV usage like the BBC but for wifi.
I've never seen this happen for a WiFi band operator, so yeah, they're aren't looking. They certainly could though: someone is using all those grey market boosters. Some of those have enough power to show up for many miles, and triangulating them is quite easy.
They do go after cell jammers. One example from 2016 was a guy in Florida using one in his car during his daily commute. People complained their signals failed at about the same time every day and the FCC pursued it and caught him. $48K fine.
That's speculation. I know what is written in the notices and orders. The orders do not cite either complaints or determinations about interference. The notices do. Some of these document complaints with the formula: "in response to complaints." Others do not, such as this[1].
[1] https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-24-09A1.pdf
My inference is that when actual complaints exist they are documented, for evidentiary reasons. Thus, when the existence of complaints is omitted, no such complaints exist.
But if you run for hours every day, and you run a shitty PA with a too wide bandpass filter, that jams other stations? Oh boy you'll get v&.
One reason regulations like this exist is to save people the burden of having to worry that some asshole will suddenly start transmitting in a way that interferes with you and you’ll have to go to the trouble of complaining. You can proceed on the general assumption that other people will be acting within the agreed limits.
It’s a very selfish attitude to take to say ‘Ah, I’ll just crank up the gain til someone complains’ rather than ‘I guess I’ll stick within the guidance so I don’t inconvenience anyone’.
> some asshole will suddenly start transmitting in a way that interferes with you
remember LightSquared/Ligado Networks? assholes, but with $$$ tho. still a thing:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23103290 https://www.gps.gov/spectrum/ligado/
Once again, I say that you can push your TX higher than "accepted" and for the most part get away with it. If you push it higher to have negative consequences on other people (especially those other hackers that feel slighted) will seek to fix the glitch.
I'm really confused on how this original comment is so lost on here.
In the area of radio, you must be extremely careful with this mindset. Keep in mind that interference may affect important / safety-critical infrastructure (and you may not even realize). For example, I am frequency facing issues from wifi (with deactivated or nonfunctional DFS) towards a weather radar in the same band (which indeed is the primary user, and weather forecasts are critical to aeronautical and maritime safety ! This is a nightmare to troubleshoot).
If you want to tinker with radio, I would suggest to pass your HAM radio license (which will give you the minimum background with regards to radio, propagation, regulations, etc.).
Because an increasing number of people do not care anymore about any regulations, I see many administrations worldwide are increasingly pushing for locked firmwares and bootloaders (i.e. no more openwrt), more import control, etc. If you want to still be able to tinker with hardware and radio in the future, you should always ensure peaceful coexistence with others i.e. know what you are doing and work within the boundaries of regulations (be it txpower, duty-cycle, listen-before-talk, etc. Those limits are there for a good reason !).
I'm not entirely sold that it's the curious hackers of the world driving that trend as opposed to incentives like surveillance and control
Folks were modifying stuff for more power, more "channels" and disabling dfs and apc. So it did not happen for no reason. And now vendors like Ubiquiti and Mikrotik have special USA models with more locked down firmwares.
People trying to hack their DOCSIS modems and flashing firmware from other countries disrupt everyone on the same trunk cable. People thinking they'll just beef up the PA on their crappy wifi AP to get a better signal instead of adding a second AP cause enough noise to disrupt an entire neighborhood, especially if the PA output fries (part of) the bandpass and now there's side emissions all over the place. People burning wet wood in their ovens because they can't be arsed to dry it properly or, worse, outright burning trash stink up the entire 'hood. And people taking dumps in the rivers were enough of a problem in medieval times already that warnings like "it is forbidden to crap in the river on <day> because the next day beer will be brewed" [1] were commonplace.
[1] https://www.abendblatt.de/vermischtes/journal/article1068323...
WiFi hardware is cost optimized. It’s likely that the PA chips in your radio are going to distort if pushed past the legal limits. Many radios distort heavily past 100mW.
Its common for people to turn the power setting all the way up thinking they’re getting the best performance, but best performance might occur at a lower setting.
The point is to stop scaremongering about letting people turn up the TX. It's just a damn WiFi radio. They aren't going to be blocking their neighbor from listening to their favorite ClearChannel session of commercials. At most their neighbor might get a bit of interference. But if you're running on the same channel as your neighbor, you're already asking for trouble. Nobody's going to emergency, nobody's going to jail. We're not talking about firing up an 100kW flame thrower of a radio signal here. Let's just everyone keep their knickers on and realize the context of what we're discussing
If you increase the TXpower way beyond the P1dB of your PA, you will introduce distorsion and therefore harmonics beyond your operating band (i.e. you can end up disturbing RF services other than wi-fi, possibly safety-critical services). https://www.everythingrf.com/community/what-is-p1db
=> Don't do that !
This isn't true, WiFi handles same-channel interference better than off-channel interference. Especially newer standards have more tools to deal with it like BSS coloring.
Translated the linearity of your PA (nevermind LNA for RX) is unlikely to support even 20dBm, and the higher rate modulations for even 802.11a/g (nevermind any MIMO/SDMA workings) are EVM limited, not received power limited
It's not a really a big poblem for those who know, the limiting PA can be replaced or bypass with with more accommodating ones that can transmit higher power with better linearity and power envelope tracking.
[1] Crest factor:
i don't know why we're being argumentative here
And yes, they have vans roving the streets looking for illegal transmissions.
Just the other day in another thread there was the conversation about mischievous people doing things, and that pretty much sounds like what that guy was doing. He got the best of both worlds knowing he was going to cause some chaos but none of the repercussions of it.
Since the goal of hide and seek is to get home (before found) I’d call that traveler assistance. <grin>
Only and when they receive complaints. Then they have to decide if it is serious enough to care. This is a far cry different than active BBC patrols.
I clearly stated until people notice and complain. It's like these words were totally ignored.