Silly legal question.

Ian Stirling wrote:
: Would it be legal to use 802.11 network gear for LEO to earth
: comms?
: Obviously slightly larger than normal antennas would be needed, and

My non-JD opinion: No. AFAIK it is not approved for LEO, and
would need to go through the usual regulatory hurdles - very considerable
ones since it is not currently allocated for that use.
I can't help but wonder what the satellite-radio folks (like XM)
would think about that, as concerned as they are with interference from
groundbased 802.11 setups.

regards,
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In article ,
Ian Stirling wrote:
Would it be legal to use 802.11 network gear for LEO to earth comms?

Probably not; satellite communications are in a completely different
category and explicit authorization would probably be needed.

Obviously slightly larger than normal antennas would be needed, and
perhaps some firmware tweaks.

I wonder if the protocols would work at all; I'm not familiar with the
details of 802.11, but many such designs assume short speed-of-light lags.
(As with wired Ethernet, you can often get away with modest violations of
the rules, at the cost of reduced performance and/or robustness, but there
are limits.)
--
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