5 ms·

Department of Defense and Department of Commerce to Develop Open 5G Systems

154 points by OpticalWindows 6y ago

_underfl0w_ 6y ago
Asking for "comments" to an email may not end so well for them, especially when it comes to "strengthening [...] warfighting capabilities". Seems like they might be trying to spin this "Challenge" as a sort of AES-style competition, but merely requesting comments en masse seems like it will go the way of the Net Neutrality comments on the FCC site - lots of spam drowning out legitimate input, leading to powerful entities feeling justified in ignoring all submissions.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- aaronbrethorst 6y ago
  Public comments are a standard feature of this sort of rule change. If you look closely at this press release, you'll also find a link to the accompanying Federal Register page: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/01/11/2021-00202/5g-challenge-notice-of-inquiry https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/01/11/2021-00... In the top right corner is a button marked "SUBMIT A FORMAL COMMENT." I assume that sending an email is treated identically to submitting a formal comment. Here's more information about the rulemaking process: https://www.federalregister.gov/uploads/2011/01/the_rulemaking_process.pdf https://www.federalregister.gov/uploads/2011/01/the_rulemaki...
supernova87a 6y ago
Sigh, these always read like such PR department unclear jargony press releases. "...The 5G Challenge would leverage the innovative capabilities of the software development and telecommunications technology communities to enable more open implementations of 5G systems, including end-user equipment, the radio access network, and the core network, with a focus on the 5G protocol stack software. " How about: "We want to run a game with a big reward. A game that gets people to come up with the most innovative, clever, secure, resilient ways to use 5G for our military that we haven't seen before. Do you have ideas for how 5G can be implemented in open hardware or software? Do you have ideas for how we can structure a game and its reward to achieve something like that? Let us know if you have ideas, and you may be able to be a part of something big."
- aWidebrant 6y ago
  Personally, I'll have the former style of business jargon over the latter. Sure, "leverage the innovative" doesn't mean anything, but at least it's not actively infantilizing.
  - Frondo 6y ago
    Yeah, seems like trying to get away from the business speak got us to job descriptions that call for ninja rock stars. I'll take the business jargon.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Doesn't sound infantilizing to me. It reads like normal people talk. That's good. Infantilizing is what 'Frondo refers to, "ninja rock stars" job descriptions. What they have in common with business jargon is using a lot of words to communicate near-zero actual content. They use language to press emotional buttons in the audience to create a desired atmosphere (importance and fun, respectively). I think GP did a really good job, and I prefer their take.
- gostsamo 6y ago
  Or you can read this as: We are behind in the game and we don't have anyone capable in this sphere. Nokia, Erikson, Huawey, and Samsung have all the market now and we need american presence there. We can't create a state company, so we will try to break the leaders either by sanctions or by diminishing the value of their IP through open standards until the moment when the standards are open enough to favorite our proprietary IP using them.
  - LatteLazy 6y ago
    >Having dropped the ball on cisco being shit, the DOD is now willing to spend some cash to look like they are holding at least one ball in this market...
austincheney 6y ago
This is highly unusual from a technology perspective. Cellular communications are distinctly and deliberately not part of DOD missions outside the US because those transmissions are easily intercepted and not encrypted. Any use of international cell phones by DOD personnel is purely a matter of urgency and convenience severely limited in what they can be used for.
- philprx 6y ago
  Part true, but to be precise: Public, notably 4G infrastructures, have been used as underlying networks for day to day military and security activity. The overlay network itself is still encrypted and resilient by using other networks if public network is not available. With 5G, it even accelerates. Therefore it justifies part of the ban of Huawei and the security needed for 5G networks. So this program does not look so astonishing.
  - austincheney 6y ago
    I am an Army signal officer with 5 deployments. The military considers cell phones inherently insecure and not a mission asset, regardless of what you may read.
    - hatmatrix 6y ago
      Don't a lot of other devices use the 4G network for data tranfer (with encryption)?
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      Is that because military-purpose communications is insecure over 4G, or because modern smartphones, full of adtech malware, make it all to easy to leak your location by accident?
      - Jtsummers 6y ago
        It's a variety of factors. Information leaking is one, but a big one is the lack of control. DoD does not control any significant part of the present cellular network, so it might be useful but it oughtn't be part of your critical systems.
balia 6y ago
Interesting. So basically a state driven economy?
- ovi256 6y ago
  Check out the fraction of GDP controlled by government. That train has left the station a long while ago, in all countries.
- SkyMarshal 6y ago
  Better than a market-driven one that fucks up your strategically-important crown jewels like Bell Labs.
- Daho0n 6y ago
  I don't think that is the reasoning. IMO this comment by gostsamo is spot on: >We are behind in the game and we don't have anyone capable in this sphere. Nokia, Erikson, Huawey, and Samsung have all the market now and we need american presence there. We can't create a state company, so we will try to break the leaders either by sanctions or by diminishing the value of their IP through open standards until the moment when the standards are open enough to favorite our proprietary IP using them.
- randomopining 6y ago
  You need some cohesiveness and a guiding force/philosophy of where to go. Otherwise you just have a bunch of corps only incentivized to make money, with disjointed ideas etc. Most are only incentivized for short time horizons up to 10-20 years max. Govs can plan a 50-100 year vision for a nation (like China is doing).
- xxpor 6y ago
  What was the actual purpose of ENIAC? >Although ENIAC was designed and primarily used to calculate artillery firing tables for the United States Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory (which later became a part of the Army Research Laboratory),[6][7] its first program was a study of the feasibility of the thermonuclear weapon.[8][9] What was the first attempt at a large scale computer network? >In 1959, Anatolii Ivanovich Kitov proposed to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union a detailed plan for the re-organisation of the control of the Soviet armed forces and of the Soviet economy on the basis of a network of computing centres, the OGAS.[6] States have always had a strong strategic interest in ensuring they have access and control of critical technology of the time for purposes of power projection. It's less about "the economy" than ensuring influence over strategically critical tech.
dikaio 6y ago
Isn’t this about 8 years late...
- ramoz 6y ago
  What do today's 5G innovations look like? Can't the DoD jumpstart to get there. BTW DoC includes NOAA which has pretty advanced networking, and I think purposely have held off from 5G due to large uncertain risks
DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
in 2020 US AG[1] floated the idea of buying shares in Nokia or Ericsson to be able to have a say in this space (talking about "controlling the means of production" lol). For natsec this isn't enough which seems to be also the conclusion of DoD. Having worked in this space, a company bidding here will not be able to do this without spending billions on implementing and being part of the non-military commercial market (and paying commercial rates for engineers to build it). It took commercial vendors nearly a decade to build 5G and the only reason they were so "fast" was because they had already experienced engineers on their payroll who understood the basics of 3G/4G. if they accept bids it would be more realistic to just focus on a MIL spec equivalent documents of 3GPP specs and then have the Nokia or Ericsson sites in the US build it for them. Even they do this there is still the "Outsourced elephant in the room": "5G: The outsourced elephant in the room" https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/5g-elephant-in-the-room/ https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/5g-elephant-in-the-room/ If they're really serious about natsec the only way forward would be a complete isolation for the military network. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/1aa61918-48fc-11ea-aeb3-955839e06441 https://www.ft.com/content/1aa61918-48fc-11ea-aeb3-955839e06...
- otoburb 6y ago
  >>It took commercial vendors nearly a decade to build 5G and the only reason they were so "fast" was because they had already experienced engineers on their payroll who understood the basics of 3G/4G. 100% agree. Also, many of the large domain players (Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, ZTE) actively participated in the 3GPP standards process to ensure they were kept abreast of what was being proposed. This is a pretty steep hill to climb for the US to build out a competitive domestic solution.
  - rektide 6y ago
    Sure seems like pursuing public source & public development might help generate some of that talent & know-how. If a nation has forgotten how to do something, or never knew in the first place (the Apollo Program), sometimes a climb is worthwhile, not only for where you get, but for what your nation learns & becomes along the way: greater. I'm in extreme favor of public-sourcing America into a nation with more more savvy & more skill at wireless connection. Get the ball rolling on getting better! Thankfully there seem like a lot of interested, civic minded folk out there, whose passion for radio-based connectivity & sharing that information is high. Meanwhile our nation's cellular networks still run fantastically unsecure SS7, is my understanding. Some kind of neat undertones of Secret History of Silicon Valley[1] here, except it's a different kind of protection, a different kind of guard for the world: not against military adversaries, but against our own inability to connect ourselves amid the software-run world. [1] https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ https://steveblank.com/secret-history/
zoobab 6y ago
apt-get install 5G
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
arbitrage 6y ago
If the U.S. DOD is involved, then no -- it will not be 'open'. Americans always play weird games with the truth, what they think you'll allow them to get away with when they lie straight to your face.
- jjoonathan 6y ago
  (Brought to you on the open internet which grew directly from a DoD project.)
  - ramoz 6y ago
    (While your uber eats is in route using GPS)
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  They're looking for more open technology that they can use as parts of their system. As opposed to, say, the present cellular systems where it's: 1. Hard to create your own cell network (in contrast to a wifi or ethernet network). 2. Limited choice on vendors (again, in contrast to wifi and ethernet). 5G's potential ubiquity and utility, but limited vendors, is an issue for the DoD. They want to use it, but if they can't build out their own 5G infrastructure reliably with a decent variety of vendors it's a no-go.
pabs3 6y ago
I wonder if these will be useful to them: https://open5gs.org/ https://open5gs.org/ https://www.openairinterface.org/ https://www.openairinterface.org/
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Zigurd 6y ago
This is a strange initiative. Of course it would be good if the telecom infrastructure were open, secure, and auditable. But there are some barriers: You cannot make communications secure AND enable interception. You are required to provide undetectable (even to network management systems)interception for (IIRC) 1% of traffic. This has to be controlled from an off-site LI console at law enforcement agencies. And that's just the tip of the surveillance iceberg. There are parts of a 5G system that could be open source, like most of the RAN, since LI happens in the mobile switching center. But for these parts of the network, the equipment providers could just be required to make their code public and audit it. Possibly needs patent suit protection, but that would get you there fastest. As others on this thread have pointed out the whole telecom gear game is wildly unsuited for open systems for a whole bunch of other reasons.
BelenusMordred 6y ago
Somewhat shocked by the responses here. This is great news if they truly go through with open spec hardware and open source 5G firmware, it would be a seismic shift in how cellular modems have been rolled out in the last 30 years. Truly couldn't care less if it is driven by Europe or China having better tech or whatever geopolitical flavour of the minute caused such things, I would 100% support a US effort if the went down an open source path, where can I sign up to donate development effort? The most widespread bastion of closed source binary blobs left on the planet with no alternatives is cellular baseband firmware. Anyone breaking down those walls should be congratulated regardless of the reasons. If you are interested in these things don't be put off by the kneejerk comments here, it's fertile land, there are devs who have worked for years on open source cellular modem software and poured significant money/energy into such endeavours knowing they could never realistically get their work approved by regulators anywhere on Earth. Have some links, honestly surprised many people in 2nd one haven't been arrested. This is a highly regulated space and they've caused a tad bit of trouble over the years for simply trying to be free. https://www.freecalypso.org/ https://www.freecalypso.org/ https://osmocom.org/ https://osmocom.org/

Asking for "comments" to an email may not end so well for them, especially when it comes to "strengthening [...] warfighting capabilities". Seems like they might be trying to spin this "Challenge" as a sort of AES-style competition, but merely requesting comments en masse seems like it will go the way of the Net Neutrality comments on the FCC site - lots of spam drowning out legitimate input, leading to powerful entities feeling justified in ignoring all submissions.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
aaronbrethorst 6y ago
Public comments are a standard feature of this sort of rule change. If you look closely at this press release, you'll also find a link to the accompanying Federal Register page: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/01/11/2021-00202/5g-challenge-notice-of-inquiry https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/01/11/2021-00... In the top right corner is a button marked "SUBMIT A FORMAL COMMENT." I assume that sending an email is treated identically to submitting a formal comment. Here's more information about the rulemaking process: https://www.federalregister.gov/uploads/2011/01/the_rulemaking_process.pdf https://www.federalregister.gov/uploads/2011/01/the_rulemaki...

supernova87a 6y ago

Sigh, these always read like such PR department unclear jargony press releases. "...The 5G Challenge would leverage the innovative capabilities of the software development and telecommunications technology communities to enable more open implementations of 5G systems, including end-user equipment, the radio access network, and the core network, with a focus on the 5G protocol stack software. " How about: "We want to run a game with a big reward. A game that gets people to come up with the most innovative, clever, secure, resilient ways to use 5G for our military that we haven't seen before. Do you have ideas for how 5G can be implemented in open hardware or software? Do you have ideas for how we can structure a game and its reward to achieve something like that? Let us know if you have ideas, and you may be able to be a part of something big."

aWidebrant 6y ago
Personally, I'll have the former style of business jargon over the latter. Sure, "leverage the innovative" doesn't mean anything, but at least it's not actively infantilizing.
- Frondo 6y ago
  Yeah, seems like trying to get away from the business speak got us to job descriptions that call for ninja rock stars. I'll take the business jargon.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Doesn't sound infantilizing to me. It reads like normal people talk. That's good. Infantilizing is what 'Frondo refers to, "ninja rock stars" job descriptions. What they have in common with business jargon is using a lot of words to communicate near-zero actual content. They use language to press emotional buttons in the audience to create a desired atmosphere (importance and fun, respectively). I think GP did a really good job, and I prefer their take.
gostsamo 6y ago
Or you can read this as: We are behind in the game and we don't have anyone capable in this sphere. Nokia, Erikson, Huawey, and Samsung have all the market now and we need american presence there. We can't create a state company, so we will try to break the leaders either by sanctions or by diminishing the value of their IP through open standards until the moment when the standards are open enough to favorite our proprietary IP using them.
- LatteLazy 6y ago
  >Having dropped the ball on cisco being shit, the DOD is now willing to spend some cash to look like they are holding at least one ball in this market...

austincheney 6y ago

This is highly unusual from a technology perspective. Cellular communications are distinctly and deliberately not part of DOD missions outside the US because those transmissions are easily intercepted and not encrypted. Any use of international cell phones by DOD personnel is purely a matter of urgency and convenience severely limited in what they can be used for.

philprx 6y ago
Part true, but to be precise: Public, notably 4G infrastructures, have been used as underlying networks for day to day military and security activity. The overlay network itself is still encrypted and resilient by using other networks if public network is not available. With 5G, it even accelerates. Therefore it justifies part of the ban of Huawei and the security needed for 5G networks. So this program does not look so astonishing.
- austincheney 6y ago
  I am an Army signal officer with 5 deployments. The military considers cell phones inherently insecure and not a mission asset, regardless of what you may read.
  - hatmatrix 6y ago
    Don't a lot of other devices use the 4G network for data tranfer (with encryption)?
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Is that because military-purpose communications is insecure over 4G, or because modern smartphones, full of adtech malware, make it all to easy to leak your location by accident?
    - Jtsummers 6y ago
      It's a variety of factors. Information leaking is one, but a big one is the lack of control. DoD does not control any significant part of the present cellular network, so it might be useful but it oughtn't be part of your critical systems.

balia 6y ago

Interesting. So basically a state driven economy?

ovi256 6y ago
Check out the fraction of GDP controlled by government. That train has left the station a long while ago, in all countries.
SkyMarshal 6y ago
Better than a market-driven one that fucks up your strategically-important crown jewels like Bell Labs.
Daho0n 6y ago
I don't think that is the reasoning. IMO this comment by gostsamo is spot on: >We are behind in the game and we don't have anyone capable in this sphere. Nokia, Erikson, Huawey, and Samsung have all the market now and we need american presence there. We can't create a state company, so we will try to break the leaders either by sanctions or by diminishing the value of their IP through open standards until the moment when the standards are open enough to favorite our proprietary IP using them.
randomopining 6y ago
You need some cohesiveness and a guiding force/philosophy of where to go. Otherwise you just have a bunch of corps only incentivized to make money, with disjointed ideas etc. Most are only incentivized for short time horizons up to 10-20 years max. Govs can plan a 50-100 year vision for a nation (like China is doing).
xxpor 6y ago
What was the actual purpose of ENIAC? >Although ENIAC was designed and primarily used to calculate artillery firing tables for the United States Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory (which later became a part of the Army Research Laboratory),[6][7] its first program was a study of the feasibility of the thermonuclear weapon.[8][9] What was the first attempt at a large scale computer network? >In 1959, Anatolii Ivanovich Kitov proposed to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union a detailed plan for the re-organisation of the control of the Soviet armed forces and of the Soviet economy on the basis of a network of computing centres, the OGAS.[6] States have always had a strong strategic interest in ensuring they have access and control of critical technology of the time for purposes of power projection. It's less about "the economy" than ensuring influence over strategically critical tech.

dikaio 6y ago

Isn’t this about 8 years late...

ramoz 6y ago
What do today's 5G innovations look like? Can't the DoD jumpstart to get there. BTW DoC includes NOAA which has pretty advanced networking, and I think purposely have held off from 5G due to large uncertain risks

DyslexicAtheist 6y ago

in 2020 US AG[1] floated the idea of buying shares in Nokia or Ericsson to be able to have a say in this space (talking about "controlling the means of production" lol). For natsec this isn't enough which seems to be also the conclusion of DoD. Having worked in this space, a company bidding here will not be able to do this without spending billions on implementing and being part of the non-military commercial market (and paying commercial rates for engineers to build it). It took commercial vendors nearly a decade to build 5G and the only reason they were so "fast" was because they had already experienced engineers on their payroll who understood the basics of 3G/4G. if they accept bids it would be more realistic to just focus on a MIL spec equivalent documents of 3GPP specs and then have the Nokia or Ericsson sites in the US build it for them. Even they do this there is still the "Outsourced elephant in the room": "5G: The outsourced elephant in the room" https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/5g-elephant-in-the-room/ https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/5g-elephant-in-the-room/ If they're really serious about natsec the only way forward would be a complete isolation for the military network. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/1aa61918-48fc-11ea-aeb3-955839e06441 https://www.ft.com/content/1aa61918-48fc-11ea-aeb3-955839e06...

otoburb 6y ago
>>It took commercial vendors nearly a decade to build 5G and the only reason they were so "fast" was because they had already experienced engineers on their payroll who understood the basics of 3G/4G. 100% agree. Also, many of the large domain players (Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, ZTE) actively participated in the 3GPP standards process to ensure they were kept abreast of what was being proposed. This is a pretty steep hill to climb for the US to build out a competitive domestic solution.
- rektide 6y ago
  Sure seems like pursuing public source & public development might help generate some of that talent & know-how. If a nation has forgotten how to do something, or never knew in the first place (the Apollo Program), sometimes a climb is worthwhile, not only for where you get, but for what your nation learns & becomes along the way: greater. I'm in extreme favor of public-sourcing America into a nation with more more savvy & more skill at wireless connection. Get the ball rolling on getting better! Thankfully there seem like a lot of interested, civic minded folk out there, whose passion for radio-based connectivity & sharing that information is high. Meanwhile our nation's cellular networks still run fantastically unsecure SS7, is my understanding. Some kind of neat undertones of Secret History of Silicon Valley[1] here, except it's a different kind of protection, a different kind of guard for the world: not against military adversaries, but against our own inability to connect ourselves amid the software-run world. [1] https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ https://steveblank.com/secret-history/

zoobab 6y ago

apt-get install 5G

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

arbitrage 6y ago

If the U.S. DOD is involved, then no -- it will not be 'open'. Americans always play weird games with the truth, what they think you'll allow them to get away with when they lie straight to your face.

jjoonathan 6y ago
(Brought to you on the open internet which grew directly from a DoD project.)
- ramoz 6y ago
  (While your uber eats is in route using GPS)
Jtsummers 6y ago
They're looking for more open technology that they can use as parts of their system. As opposed to, say, the present cellular systems where it's: 1. Hard to create your own cell network (in contrast to a wifi or ethernet network). 2. Limited choice on vendors (again, in contrast to wifi and ethernet). 5G's potential ubiquity and utility, but limited vendors, is an issue for the DoD. They want to use it, but if they can't build out their own 5G infrastructure reliably with a decent variety of vendors it's a no-go.

pabs3 6y ago

I wonder if these will be useful to them: https://open5gs.org/ https://open5gs.org/ https://www.openairinterface.org/ https://www.openairinterface.org/

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Zigurd 6y ago

This is a strange initiative. Of course it would be good if the telecom infrastructure were open, secure, and auditable. But there are some barriers: You cannot make communications secure AND enable interception. You are required to provide undetectable (even to network management systems)interception for (IIRC) 1% of traffic. This has to be controlled from an off-site LI console at law enforcement agencies. And that's just the tip of the surveillance iceberg. There are parts of a 5G system that could be open source, like most of the RAN, since LI happens in the mobile switching center. But for these parts of the network, the equipment providers could just be required to make their code public and audit it. Possibly needs patent suit protection, but that would get you there fastest. As others on this thread have pointed out the whole telecom gear game is wildly unsuited for open systems for a whole bunch of other reasons.

BelenusMordred 6y ago

Somewhat shocked by the responses here. This is great news if they truly go through with open spec hardware and open source 5G firmware, it would be a seismic shift in how cellular modems have been rolled out in the last 30 years. Truly couldn't care less if it is driven by Europe or China having better tech or whatever geopolitical flavour of the minute caused such things, I would 100% support a US effort if the went down an open source path, where can I sign up to donate development effort? The most widespread bastion of closed source binary blobs left on the planet with no alternatives is cellular baseband firmware. Anyone breaking down those walls should be congratulated regardless of the reasons. If you are interested in these things don't be put off by the kneejerk comments here, it's fertile land, there are devs who have worked for years on open source cellular modem software and poured significant money/energy into such endeavours knowing they could never realistically get their work approved by regulators anywhere on Earth. Have some links, honestly surprised many people in 2nd one haven't been arrested. This is a highly regulated space and they've caused a tad bit of trouble over the years for simply trying to be free. https://www.freecalypso.org/ https://www.freecalypso.org/ https://osmocom.org/ https://osmocom.org/