Re: FCC issues new rules about foreign made routers

On Tue, 24 Mar 2026, Jared Mauch wrote:
>> The conditional approval procedure is absurd. It requires the vendor
>> to commit to manufacture in the U.S.
>
> I suspect this is why the waiver is really the method, at least for the foreseeable future.  Much of this is existing and predates the current administration for those of us who have been watching this space.  There’s quite a bit of problems out there with these embedded systems and how they are managed and maintained.

In the documents I don't see any provision for waivers other than 
conditional approval.  People more familiar with FCC process than me say 
the same, there's no realistic way to get anything approved.

> The number of people who don’t want to upgrade firmware because of worries of new problems vs those who really should upgrade because the embedded solution is based on a very old and already exploitable software suite is quite large.  I discovered this during a lot of the research into open resolvers done quite some time ago.  The number of these embedded platforms that did something odd or were broken was quite big.
>
> With the advancements in tools where you can take something like binwalk and a software image to find exploits by using an AI toolset, plus you get the really difficult to patch situations such as this:

Oh, absolutely, the software is awful and there's a lot we can and should 
do about it.  But that's unrelated to where the box is physically 
assembled.  I have a Ubiquiti Edgerouter which as far as I know is 
designed in the US, and runs software written in the US, but it's 
assembled in China so it's lucky I already have one.

Regards,
John Levine, [email protected], Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly
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