CCNA® Wireless Study Guide

Chapter 1. Wireless Networks and Topologies

THE CCNA WIRELESS EXAM TOPICS COVERED IN THIS CHAPTER ARE:

• Describe WLAN fundamentals

  • Describe networking technologies used in wireless (SSID → WLAN_ID → Interface → VLAN, 802.1Q trunking)

  • Describe wireless topologies (IBSS, BSS, ESS, Point-to-Point, Point-to-Multipoint, basic Mesh, bridging)

With that established, we've come to a great starting point: if you want to understand the basic wireless LANs (WLANs) most commonly used today, just think 10BaseT Ethernet with hubs—except the wireless devices we connect to are called access points (APs). This means that our WLANs run half-duplex communication—everyone is sharing the same bandwidth, and only one device is communicating at a time per channel.

This isn't necessarily bad; it's just not good enough. Because so many people rely on wireless networks today, it's critical that they evolve faster than greased lightning to keep up with our rapidly escalating needs. The good news is that this is actually happening—and it even works securely!

In this chapter, I am going talk about the various types of wireless networks, and then discuss the minimum devices needed to create a simple wireless network. I'll then show you some basic wireless topologies, and finish with a review on switching and VLANs. Why am I going to talk about switching and VLANs? Because if you think about it for a minute, you come ...