Wireless networking

Wireless networks utilize a range of 802.11 specifications to provide connectivity over 2.4 or 5 GHz frequency bands at a variety of speeds. The significant differences between wireless frames and those found on wired networks are as follows:

  • Wireless networks employ carrier sense (every station is listening), multiple access (shared medium), and collision avoidance (avoiding collisions instead of just recovering from them) techniques, which reduce the throughput
  • In addition to data frames, which get forwarded to the wired network, wireless frame types include the following:
    • Management frames: This is used for authentication and association tasks
    • Control frames: This controls send/receive functions on the shared media to help avoid ...

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