Hi
On Sunday 10 March 2013, Daniel Golle wrote:
> On 03/10/2013 05:37 PM, Bastian Bittorf wrote:
> > * Daniel Golle <daniel.go...@gmail.com> [10.03.2013 16:24]:
[…]
I'm not going to comment upon what's the correct approach in this case
and certainly agree that the local regulatory requirements should be
enforced by default.
> Simply speaking: If I buy a TP-LINK router in germany and flash it with
> OpenWrt,
> it will come with ETSI 0x68 regdomain (or similar) set in the "art" partition,
[…]
If only this were true…
Over the years, I've bought 4 TP-Link routers (TL-WR941ND, two
TL-WR1043ND and TL-WDR4300) through regular (and different) retail
channels (online and brick & mortar stores). Every single one has an
EEPROM/ ART locked to the 'US' regdomain (the official vendor firmware,
including localized variants, ignores the ART content and makes the
user to select the country freely).
Likewise I own more than 10 Atheros based wlan cards (most built by
TP-Link), including ath5k, ath9k, ar5523, ar9170 and ath9k_htc based
ones, all but a single one (which shipped as part of a netbook, set
to 0x37 ETSI1_WORLD) are locked to CN (APL1_WORLD).
While this is somewhat acceptable in the 2.4 GHz band, intersecting US,
DE and CN in the 5 GHz band is not…
Unfortunately the stock regdomain settings on Atheros hardware (TP-Link
in particular) are typically wrong and the official drivers circumvent
them all the time. It would be so much easier if the EEPROM/ ART
wouldn't contain country code (group), but an explicit list of
(calibrated) allowed frequency/ txpower mappings - and not to allow
bypassing them with any driver at all (as that would force vendors to
program either correct country codes or offer the whole range with
further limits applied purely in software, rather than enforcing an
always wrong country code in hardware and ignoring the setting in their
own firmware).
Answering your follow up mail one below, why is it often needed to
override the EEPROM/ ART settings:
- enable channel 12, 13 (the official TP-Link vendor firmware allows
this after selecting germany[1])
- restricting transmit power to allowed values in DE (further
restrictions can be applied easily, so no problem)
- most importantly, to get a reasonable selecting of 5 GHz channels, as
the intersection of US (FCC), DE (ETSI) and CN (APL) is particularly
bad --> empty list (the official TP-Link vendor firmware allows this
after selecting germany[1]).
- to make sure that transmitted IEEE 802.11d country IEs don't create
even more havoc.
Regards
Stefan Lippers-Hollmann
[1] http://www.tp-link.com/resources/simulator/TL-WDR4300/index.htm
Wireless 2.4GHz --> Wireless Settings --> Region/ Channel
Wireless 2GHz --> Wireless Settings --> Region/ Channel
yes, this reflects the actual firmware and the country setting can
be toggled freely, including different settings for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz…
_______________________________________________
openwrt-devel mailing list
openwrt-devel@lists.openwrt.org
https://lists.openwrt.org/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel
