Networking / Beginners

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Historical/Conceptual

Instead of a physical set of wires running among networked PCs, servers, printers, or what-have-you, a wireless network uses radio waves to enable these devices to communicate with each other. This offers great promise to the folks who've spent time pulling cable up through ceiling spaces and down behind walls, and therefore know how time consuming that job can be.

But wireless networking is more than just convenient-sometimes it's the only networking solution that works. For example, I have a client whose offices are housed in a building designated as a historic landmark. Guess what? You can't go punching holes in historic landmarks to make room for network cable runs. Wireless networking is the solution.

NOTE Because the networking signal is freed from wires, you'll sometimes hear the term "unbounded media" to describe wireless networking.

Wireless networks operate at the same OSI layers and use the same protocols as wired networks. The thing that differs is the type of media-radio waves instead of cables-and the methods for accessing the media. Different wireless networking solutions have come and gone in the past, but the wireless networking market these days is dominated by the most common implementation of the IEEE 802.11 wireless Ethernet standard, Wi-Fi.

The tutorial looks first at the standards for modern wireless networks, and then turns to implementing those networks. The tutorial finishes with a discussion on troubleshooting Wi-Fi.