Regulatory Alert - anyone's still using 802.11a?

Could be of interest to those deploying wireless in 5.25-5.35Ghz band

Excerpts from Proxim memo:

Regulatory Alert A new FCC regulation will impact the sale of radios operating in the

5.25-5.35 GHz band. On July 20, 2007 only products that support detection of the 5 radar types specified by the FCC in the 5.25-5.35 GHz band can be imported or marketed.

The following document on FCC website describes the rules and has additional links:

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Does not sound like it's going to affect existing equipment but will impact sales of new devices. Proxim, for example had to axe 3 devices.

Reply to
Dmitri(Cabling-Design.com
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info_at_cabling-design_dot snipped-for-privacy@foo.com (Dmitri(Cabling-Design.com)) hath wroth:

It's not just 802.11a. There are plenty of non-802.11a type systems using the various UNII bands. 802.11a is just one of many modulation/encoding schemes in use on these bands. A few notes...

DFS (Dynamic Frequency Selection) and TPC (Transmit Power Control) are part of 802.11h, which is the European flavour of 802.11a as adopted by WRC-03 (World Radiocommunications Conference 2003):

In theory, this makes such equipment compliant with European HiperLAN systems.

In 2003, the FCC released another 255MHz (11 channels), in addition to the existing 325Mhz (13 channels), making DFS workable. The problem was that it took another 2-3 years for the chip manufacturers to incorporate these frequencies and 802.11h features in their chipsets. As a result of the delay, much of what's on the market today does not support 802.11h.

The FCC prohibits ad-hoc wireless between clients for 802.11a. There is no such restriction for wireless bridges.

Note that 802.11h features must be in both the client and the access point.

I don't have a clue what will happen to all the grandfathered equipment or non-compliant equipment still in inventory.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

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