802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition

Foreword

Matthew Gast was my mentor long before I met him. I began reporting on wireless data networking in October 2000 when I discovered that Apple’s claims for its 802.11b-based AirPort Base Station were actually true.

I’d been burned with another form of wireless networking that used infrared, and had spent many fruitless hours using other “interesting” networking technologies that led to dead ends. I figured 802.11b was just another one. Was I glad I was wrong!

This discovery took me down a path that led, inexorably, to the first edition of 802.11 Wireless Networks. How did this stuff actually work as advertised? I knew plenty about the ISO model, TCP/IP, and Ethernet frames, but I couldn’t reconcile a medium in which all parties talked in the same space with what I knew about Ethernet’s methods of coping with shared contention.

Matthew taught me through words and figures that I didn’t originally understand, but returned to again and again as I descended further into technical detail in my attempts to explain Wi-Fi to a broader and broader audience through articles in The New York Times, The Seattle Times, PC World, and my own Wi-Fi Networking News (http://www.wifinetnews.com) site over the last five years.

I starting learning acronyms from 802.11 Wireless Networks and used Matthew’s book to go beyond expanding WDS into Wireless Distribution System into understanding precisely how two access points could exchange data with each other through a built-in 802.11 mechanism that allowed ...