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joelb Escribi?3:

The WLANs I'm dealing with these day have hundreds of APs and it's just not worth the risk or paranoia I'd incur. I recommend you "do it right the first time" then you don't have to worry about it later when you're really busy.

I basically agree with you, Joel. Even if it's unlikely that you'll get caught, the cost of having to reconfigure an enterprise WLAN on short notice should prohibit most organizations from skirting the regulations. Nevertheless, I think that there is a very real gray area here, and I'm interested in discussing it to see if others agree or how they're dealing with it.

The gray area is this: customers have needs for WLAN solutions that vendors do not provide off-the-shelf or that customers can build cheaper on their own. For example, there are LOTS of vendors of aftermarket 2.4 GHz antennas. According to the FCC, the antenna and access point need to be certified as a system to be legal, but I would be that few, if any of the people who buy those aftermarket antennas actually go to the trouble of getting certified. I think that there are a LOT of 802.11 systems out there that are 1) within regulated power output requirements but 2) are otherwise technically in violation of part 15 regulations. I'm curious about the realistic status of those WLANs.