Wireless Networking Terms

Wi-Fi and WLANs, why's and wherefore's

Wireless networking is the means by which two or more computers communicate with one another using radio frequencies. As with wired networking using Ethernet, wireless networking allows you to share resources, files, and products between computers.

Here's a list of the terms you'll need to know in order to understand wireless networking design.

Wireless Local Area Network
A wireless local area network (WLAN), like a local area network (LAN), covers a small geographical area like a home, office, or university. In a WLAN, each computer has a wireless LAN adapter that functions like a radio transceiver to communicate with other computers in the network. WLANs are generally structured in two different ways:

Ad-hoc
In an ad-hoc WLAN, each computer with an adapter sends and receives data to all other adapter-equipped computers within a geographic radius.

Infrastructure
An infrastructure topology requires each computer to send data to and receive data from an access point, which acts as an information hub.

Access Point
An access point is a radio transceiver, commonly shaped like a box with an external antenna and mounted on a wall or ceiling. It operates as a transfer point in a WLAN, acquiring signals from computers in its network and either resending those signals to other computers in its wireless network or transferring the information to a wired network.

IEEE Standards
A set of wireless networking standards developed by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) that determine the data transfer speed and radio frequencies used in a WLAN. For a WLAN to function properly, all adapters on that network must use the same standard.

IEEE 802.11
The wireless standard developed by working group 11 of the IEEE LAN/MAN Standards Committee. There are several popular techniques within the 802.11 standard. IEEE enhancements and amendments are noted by the addition of a letter after 802.11.

802.11a
Standard for WLAN networks operating at 5GHz and providing 54 Mbps with a range up to 30m.

802.11b
Standard for WLAN networks operating at 2.4 GHz and providing 11 Mbps with a range up to 100m.

802.11g
Standard for WLAN networks operating at 2.4 GHz and providing 54 Mbps with a range up to 100m.

Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi purportedly stands for Wireless Fidelity, but Wi-Fi actually is a brand name for the 802.11b IEEE standard. Wi-Fi has become well known because it is commonly used to allow wireless Internet access via an access point at hotspots.

Hotspots
Wi-Fi equipped public locations such as airports, malls, or coffee shops where a laptop or PDA can connect wirelessly to the Internet.

Media Access Control Address
The Media Access Control Address (MAC Address) is the unique physical address of each WLAN computer's adapter or card. Data in a WLAN is sent in packets, each one of which contains data as well as the particular address of the recipient and sender.

Service Set Identifier
The Service Set Identifier (SSID) is a code attached to all data packets on a WLAN that identifies the packet as part of the network. A SSID operates like an access point password with a maximum of 32 alphanumeric characters.

More information on wireless networking