The
typical Wi-Fi setup contains one or more Access Points (APs) and one or more
clients. An AP broadcasts its SSID (Service Set Identifier, Network name) via
packets that are called beacons, which are broadcasted every 100 ms. The beacons
are transmitted at 1 Mbit/s, and are relatively short and therefore are not of
influence on performance. Since 1 Mbit/s is the lowest rate of Wi-Fi it assures
that the client who receives the beacon can communicate at at least 1 Mbit/s.
Based on the settings (e.g. the SSID), the client may decide whether to connect
to an AP. Also the firmware running on the client Wi-Fi card is of influence.
Say two APs of the same SSID are in range of the client, the firmware may decide
based on signal strength to which of the two APs it will connect. The Wi-Fi
standard leaves connection criteria and roaming totally open to the client.
This
is a strength of Wi-Fi, but also means that one wireless adapter may perform
substantially better than the other. In Windows XP, there is a feature called
zero configuration which makes the
computer show any network available and lets the end user connect to it
on-the-fly. In the future, wireless cards will be more and more controlled by
the operating system. Microsoft's newest feature called
SoftMAC will take over from on-board
firmware. Since Wi-Fi transmits in the air, it has the same properties as
non-switched ethernet network. Even collisions can therefore appear like in
non-switched ethernet LAN's.
say two APs of the same SSID are in range of the client, the firmware may decide
based on signal strength to which of the two APs it will connect. The Wi-Fi
standard leaves connection criteria and roaming totally open to the client. This
is a strength of Wi-Fi, but also means that one wireless adapter may perform
substantially better than the other. In Windows XP, there is a feature called
zero configuration which makes the
computer show any network available and lets the end user connect to it
on-the-fly. In the future, wireless cards will be more and more controlled by
the operating system. Microsoft's newest feature called
SoftMAC will take over from on-board
firmware. Since Wi-Fi transmits in the air, it has the same properties as
non-switched ethernet network. Even collisions can therefore appear like in
non-switched ethernet LAN's.
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