The Book of Wireless, Second Edition

Putting It All Together

The radio link, the data structure, and the network architecture are the three essential elements that form the internal plumbing of a Wi-Fi network. Like the components of most other networks (and most plumbing systems, for that matter), these elements should be entirely invisible to the people using the network—if users can send and receive messages, read files, and perform other activities on the network, they should never have to worry about the low-level details.

Of course, this assumes that it always works exactly as it's supposed to work, and users never have to call a network help desk to ask why they can't read their email. Now that you have read this chapter, you probably know more about the way your wireless LAN ...