6 ms·

I think most people don’t know that their equipment is doing this. A lot of WiFi Routers set to auto channel will select some other channel than the one with a

I think most people don’t know that their equipment is doing this. A lot of WiFi Routers set to auto channel will select some other channel than the one with a lot of deauthentication packages, because the traffic is not stabil on this channel. In this way you get a better Internet connection if your equipment is sending these packages out. As a manufacture you know that you only need a couple of these “bad” devices before you damage the traffic for everyone, forcing everyone to upgrade all their equipment. It also benefit the Internet providers, because faster network will camouflage the problem a bit.

tripzilch 7y ago
Can you name any routers (brands) that do this?
joeraut 7y ago
This is fascinating that some manufacturers may have gone down this Darwinian path in "improving" their products. Is there any such law against this or any efforts in introducing such laws, either in Norway or elsewhere?
- gumby 7y ago
  The WiFi frequencies are unlicensed in afaik every jurisdiction (note that the precise frequencies aren’t de jure the same in every country) so it’s legal to send whatever packets you like within certain power constraints.
  - gumby 7y ago
    I just want to comment that this is who HN is great. I posted what turned out to be a misunderstanding (or incomplete if you are more generous) understanding of spectrum rules. My comment was correctly downvoted to 0, but more importantly I got a response that simply explained where I was (utterly) wrong. No flames, no further conjecture, just references. There's a little bit of following discussion. This is the way it's supposed to work!!
    - joeraut 7y ago
      From the perspective of a relatively new HNer, this sort of comment further reinforces how great the community can be, in a meta-sort of way!
  - gruez 7y ago
    >so it’s legal to send whatever packets you like within certain power constraints. No. https://boingboing.net/2014/10/03/fcc-fines-marriott-for-jamming.html https://boingboing.net/2014/10/03/fcc-fines-marriott-for-jam... >No person shall willfully or maliciously interfere with or cause interference to any radio communications of any station licensed or authorized by or under this chapter or operated by the United States Government. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/333 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/333
    - PeterisP 7y ago
      That law seems to explicitly apply to transmissions on FCC licensed spectrum, where FCC authorizes operations and ensures that you don't get interference. Wifi happens on unlicensed spectrum, wifi is not "radio communications of any station licensed or authorized by or under this chapter".
      - dragonwriter 7y ago
        Unlicensed spectrum is, as I understand it, spectrum whose use without a license is authorized (but, obviously, not licensed) by that chapter, and so is within the scope of the “authorized or licensed” language; certainly, the FCC has been consistently treated it as within the scope of that rule and hasn't been successfully challenged on it in the courts where, if it wasn't authorized or licensed by the chapter at issue, it would be an easy slam-dunk case against any FCC enforcement action treating it as such.
    - akersten 7y ago
      I really disagree with that ruling and interpretation of that quoted part of the law. Jamming to me means radio interference via indiscriminate analog noise. If we expand the definition of jamming to the protocol level like exemplified here, the law gains broad authority to interpret any online interaction that makes your experience worse as "jamming." The law should really should stick to radio frequency enforcement, and stay out of protocol-level concerns - it's just too big a can of worms.
      - 7y ago
dogma1138 7y ago
Eh? I haven't seen a single router that monitors packets on the channel other than their own, not to mention management frames of other AP's A deauth packet needs the MAC address of the AP to deauth clients connected to it and the MAC address of client you want to deauth, the latter is not required and an omission would result in the packet being treated as a "broadcast deauth" but many clients do not accept broadcast deauth requests. "Auto Channel Selection" is done very poorly on most routers, there isn't an algorithm to do so in the spec and the vast majority of routers either to a round robin on boot up or default to channel 6 when set to auto, I can count on one hand the number of routers I've seen that run any type of spectrum analysis on the available bands before selecting a channel. The only thing I've seen that even resembles closely to what you claim is that some ISP provided routers default to "disconnect" every 12-24 hours. Some just reset the DSL connection, but some also reset the clients. This is done primarily by cheap ISP's that want to free up IP addresses they basically reset the DSL connection and complete the handshake but does receive a lease until a client on their network attempts to connect to the internet, think of it as a standby mode. To ensure that random traffic on the network does not trigger a lease some deauth their wifi clients to reset all existing connections. However this is pretty rare as most DSL providers just reboot the router remotely.... However again random deauth MGMT frames on the same channel would not affect your own wifi network since the MAC addresses of those APs are not identical, conflicting MACs could cause issues but they could cause so many other issues as well way before anything like this could become an issue. I really don't know why home internet connection and particularly WIFI has so many insane myths and conspiracy theories around it. The reality is simple the 2.4ghz spectrum is the most contested unlicensed spectrum in common use with everything down from your microwave to house and car alarms, wireless headsets and other wireless radio equipment using because that spectrum has been pretty much defined as unlicensed globally way before WIFI every became a thing. As a result WIFI equipment and especially old and or cheap equipment works really poorly, and the fact that everything from your mobile phone to your toothbrush today comes with wifi and in many cases spams the spectrum even when it's not enabled only complicates the issue. Then you have housing that outside of the US is primarily built out of reinforced concrete or bricks even for internal walls and you get the worst possible environment for a stable connection. It's slightly better now in Europe as wood, foam and composites are becoming more and more common for housing both internally and externally but still I've seen flats in London that the wifi won't work from one room to another if the door was closed, we later figured out that the door had an old layer of lead paint and the flat was in a converted victorian town house from the late 1800's which was built from brick and still had lead piping, some of the windows can also be made out of lead glass especially if they are old and pebbled or painted if they weren't replaced recently (which if you live in a graded building they likely weren't because it would cost a small fortune), and some of the clay bricks and fire bricks may contain high levels of tin and lead naturally.

tripzilch 7y ago

Can you name any routers (brands) that do this?

joeraut 7y ago

This is fascinating that some manufacturers may have gone down this Darwinian path in "improving" their products. Is there any such law against this or any efforts in introducing such laws, either in Norway or elsewhere?

gumby 7y ago
The WiFi frequencies are unlicensed in afaik every jurisdiction (note that the precise frequencies aren’t de jure the same in every country) so it’s legal to send whatever packets you like within certain power constraints.
- gumby 7y ago
  I just want to comment that this is who HN is great. I posted what turned out to be a misunderstanding (or incomplete if you are more generous) understanding of spectrum rules. My comment was correctly downvoted to 0, but more importantly I got a response that simply explained where I was (utterly) wrong. No flames, no further conjecture, just references. There's a little bit of following discussion. This is the way it's supposed to work!!
  - joeraut 7y ago
    From the perspective of a relatively new HNer, this sort of comment further reinforces how great the community can be, in a meta-sort of way!
- gruez 7y ago
  >so it’s legal to send whatever packets you like within certain power constraints. No. https://boingboing.net/2014/10/03/fcc-fines-marriott-for-jamming.html https://boingboing.net/2014/10/03/fcc-fines-marriott-for-jam... >No person shall willfully or maliciously interfere with or cause interference to any radio communications of any station licensed or authorized by or under this chapter or operated by the United States Government. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/333 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/333
  - PeterisP 7y ago
    That law seems to explicitly apply to transmissions on FCC licensed spectrum, where FCC authorizes operations and ensures that you don't get interference. Wifi happens on unlicensed spectrum, wifi is not "radio communications of any station licensed or authorized by or under this chapter".
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      Unlicensed spectrum is, as I understand it, spectrum whose use without a license is authorized (but, obviously, not licensed) by that chapter, and so is within the scope of the “authorized or licensed” language; certainly, the FCC has been consistently treated it as within the scope of that rule and hasn't been successfully challenged on it in the courts where, if it wasn't authorized or licensed by the chapter at issue, it would be an easy slam-dunk case against any FCC enforcement action treating it as such.
  - akersten 7y ago
    I really disagree with that ruling and interpretation of that quoted part of the law. Jamming to me means radio interference via indiscriminate analog noise. If we expand the definition of jamming to the protocol level like exemplified here, the law gains broad authority to interpret any online interaction that makes your experience worse as "jamming." The law should really should stick to radio frequency enforcement, and stay out of protocol-level concerns - it's just too big a can of worms.
    - 7y ago

dogma1138 7y ago

Eh? I haven't seen a single router that monitors packets on the channel other than their own, not to mention management frames of other AP's A deauth packet needs the MAC address of the AP to deauth clients connected to it and the MAC address of client you want to deauth, the latter is not required and an omission would result in the packet being treated as a "broadcast deauth" but many clients do not accept broadcast deauth requests. "Auto Channel Selection" is done very poorly on most routers, there isn't an algorithm to do so in the spec and the vast majority of routers either to a round robin on boot up or default to channel 6 when set to auto, I can count on one hand the number of routers I've seen that run any type of spectrum analysis on the available bands before selecting a channel. The only thing I've seen that even resembles closely to what you claim is that some ISP provided routers default to "disconnect" every 12-24 hours. Some just reset the DSL connection, but some also reset the clients. This is done primarily by cheap ISP's that want to free up IP addresses they basically reset the DSL connection and complete the handshake but does receive a lease until a client on their network attempts to connect to the internet, think of it as a standby mode. To ensure that random traffic on the network does not trigger a lease some deauth their wifi clients to reset all existing connections. However this is pretty rare as most DSL providers just reboot the router remotely.... However again random deauth MGMT frames on the same channel would not affect your own wifi network since the MAC addresses of those APs are not identical, conflicting MACs could cause issues but they could cause so many other issues as well way before anything like this could become an issue. I really don't know why home internet connection and particularly WIFI has so many insane myths and conspiracy theories around it. The reality is simple the 2.4ghz spectrum is the most contested unlicensed spectrum in common use with everything down from your microwave to house and car alarms, wireless headsets and other wireless radio equipment using because that spectrum has been pretty much defined as unlicensed globally way before WIFI every became a thing. As a result WIFI equipment and especially old and or cheap equipment works really poorly, and the fact that everything from your mobile phone to your toothbrush today comes with wifi and in many cases spams the spectrum even when it's not enabled only complicates the issue. Then you have housing that outside of the US is primarily built out of reinforced concrete or bricks even for internal walls and you get the worst possible environment for a stable connection. It's slightly better now in Europe as wood, foam and composites are becoming more and more common for housing both internally and externally but still I've seen flats in London that the wifi won't work from one room to another if the door was closed, we later figured out that the door had an old layer of lead paint and the flat was in a converted victorian town house from the late 1800's which was built from brick and still had lead piping, some of the windows can also be made out of lead glass especially if they are old and pebbled or painted if they weren't replaced recently (which if you live in a graded building they likely weren't because it would cost a small fortune), and some of the clay bricks and fire bricks may contain high levels of tin and lead naturally.