[Ham-80211] Access control suggestions

[Drew Baxter]

My concern is that the FCC is going to largely keep hacking away at our 
spectrum in that mid-2ghz spectrum and then we couldn't do that anymore.  I 
don't have a lot of faith in using those allocations solely because the 
current FCC seems to be on a tangent of commercial interest.  I'm hoping 
they'll be making some changes there and perhaps many amateur-radio related 
issues will take different turns.

I don't think they're going to kick all the Part 15ers off the current 
block that is used for 802.11b/g.. So I think we're safer finding ways to 
adhere access control within the existing footprint at the moment.  It's 
largely easier to co-habitate with the masses than put ourselves in a 
position where we can lose the allocation where our hill-top gear is.

That's purely my thought though.  I agree, like you seem to, that using 
higher frequency allocations would be nice but we'd have to contend with 
other issues.  Cost seems to be the largest issue.  We'll go around trees, 
use mountains, etc. to overcome obstructions, but we've never been able to 
easily get over the hurdle of the dollar.   I'm hoping as the components 
become cheaper, perhaps we'll have better opportunity to explore.  However, 
that also means other unlicensed folks could easily do the 
same.  Otherwise, they'd simply give us a software tool and let us tweak 
the frequencies on the WiFi radios for our purpose.

Maybe someone (such as K5YFW) can set my mind at ease about my concerns.  :-)

--Droo, K1XVM


At 09:54 AM 11/4/2004, Steven Phillips wrote:
>Here's another idea.  Transverters.  Switch them to a
>frequency of our choice.  10GHz would be an
>interesting band to experiment with for long distance
>links.  Granted, build a transverter isn't the
>cheapest solution, but, it's probabaly a lot cheaper
>than the D-Star system.  Or, would it be better to
>build a frequency multiplier or sorts to keep them in
>the 2.4GHz range, just lower or raise the frequency a
>small bit to put them into the ham only portions?