Fun with 5G

[deanwebb]

Tom Wheeler used to be FCC head and also has affiliations with T-Mobile. He also has a big problem with Trump administration policies and practices. That being said, I find his comments on 5G to be worthwhile and factual. There's a lot of noise in the USA today about the impact of 5G on planes without many specifics. I found specifics in an article by Wheeler and wanted to share them here, since private 5G networks are coming.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2021/11/22/will-5g-mean-airplanes-falling-from-the-sky/

Short version: altimeters in planes are old. They are also costly to replace. Airlines would like someone else pay for maintaining their fleets, so they're making a thing out of this. That they *can* make a thing out if it has its roots in the previous presidential administration, which did not provide a uniform approach to 5G and left individual agencies to roll their own guidelines. This is where the FCC and FAA clash. The FAA did some testing, but didn't do a good job of it and had some altimeters knock out other altimeters in the testing...

Big picture: it's not just planes and medical gear - lots of gear can run afoul of new wireless technology if it's not properly shielded or fault-tolerant.  But innovations are coming, so we need to test the old gear so that it can get remedied prior to the go-live date.

So what is 5G? https://www.brookings.edu/research/5g-in-five-not-so-easy-pieces/

Short version: say hello to software-defined networking. Remember that from 2014? Well, it's here. And it may get to where we no longer have telco gear installed in homes and offices for Internet connectivity. It may be just hop on the 5G, pay your bill, be on your way.

Or not, if it turns out that we can't properly secure 5G networks... The security concerns stem from the collapse of the perimeter in 5G as well as supply-chain risks in terms of vendors either having sloppy code and/or being in bed with foreign governments COUGH China COUGH

So, on that note of security: https://www.brookings.edu/research/why-5g-requires-new-approaches-to-cybersecurity/

5G means no more network chokepoints, where gatekeeper perimeter devices regulate traffic. Software-defined networking in individual apps means a compromise affecting an app may be unnoticed for much longer because there's no way to have a network device monitor inappropriate activity on an app that does its own routing, so who's to say if traffic is going to a legit or illegit destination? And that IoHT - Internet of Hackable Things - grows even larger as it connects in vast hosts to the network. Keeping track of all that is already now a security hurdle - adding in even more on a network that doesn't have a perimeter is going to make security practically impossible with current mindsets, tools, and approaches.

IoT and OT devices are going to be what kill us all, I swear. (And this is me pontificating...) They are built by people who do not see them as potential targets of an attack or, if they are targets, some other person/group/company/entity is going to provide the security around them. Worse, they tend to have poor error-handling or no error-handling, so the slightest disruption from a security scan causes them to go out of service. So not only are they not built with security in mind, they're built so that meaningful security measures cannot be used in their highly-sensitive environments. Our best hope in securing IoT and OT, in my view, is the devices getting knocked out by normal network traffic connections so that they have to be made more robust. Which brings us back to the first article.

But, yeah, 5G. It's not going to knock planes out of the sky, provided the airlines can get someone else to replace the altimeters that don't play well with 5G.

[Dieselboy]

I heard about that recently.

A few years ago, I tried to find out more about 5G in UK and Australia, knowing that wireless / interference / radiation is heavily regulated and controlled there, I wanted to debunk the 5G health risk claims going about. The outcome of me trying to find out more there was a response from one of the uk bodies to advise me that they have decided to leave the regulation up to the implementers this time. WTaF. Imagine if say the banks were allowed to regulate themselves.

As with anything, to have success in any project adequate research and scope needs to be defined. Implementation is not on a whim and is a clearly defined set of stages based on the research. Deciding to just "have a go" or go with the flow is never a good idea. There will be problems and ANYONE with a brain cell that has done any sort of project in their lifetime will know and understand this. 

But, yeah, 5G. It's not going to knock planes out of the sky, provided the airlines can get someone else to replace the altimeters that don't play well with 5G.

But... if enough media attention is drawn to it, the tax payer will foot the bill.

[deanwebb]

But... if enough media attention is drawn to it, the tax payer will foot the bill.

Bing-o!