[Battlemesh] FCC Contacts about Wifi Regulations

[Jonathan Morton]

Given this specific use case, an external hardware dongle containing the
appropriate regulatory database, a firmware update permission flag, and a
cryptographic signature is indeed an expedient and probably sufficient
solution.

Any self respecting hardware hacker will be able to clone dongles of this
sort, but the effort is on the same level as attaching a power output mod,
which is much harder to defend against.  But if you do the crypto right,
they won't be able to forge regulatory data out of whole cloth.

For deployment, you simply burn and label some dongles, and ship them with
the base hardware, whose wireless and firmware update capabilities are
disabled or failsafed without it.

But I would not combine the dongle with the power cable.  Put it in line if
you must, but keep it physically separate so that the two can be spotted
independently.

Incidentally, with this approach it would be feasible to make a "worldwide"
dongle which permitted setting any established regional regulatory domain.
That would be compatible with my preferred solution.

- Jonathan Morton
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