Field Guide to Wireless LANs for Administrators and Power Users, A

Preface

My first exposure to the subject of wireless LANs was perhaps in 1999 or 2000, and at the time I was impressed with one simple fact: this is complex technology. Of course, at the time I knew absolutely nothing about wireless local area networks (LANs), so you might argue that by virtue of its very newness combined with my complete ignorance of the subject, it should have seemed complicated, but it was much more than just a little different. Nothing about it seemed familiar. It was like learning a new language, or better yet, like learning a new alphabet. There were so many new terms; for one small example among many, I could choose SSID, for which I did not even know what the acronym stood for, much less what it really meant. And even ...