Wireless Bridges
The previous section touched on DSS, which translates traffic between an 802.11 device and the distribution medium used for backhaul. Sometimes, the backhaul medium is wireless. In such cases, a WAP can also serve as a wireless bridge. The 802.11 standard describes a mechanism called wireless distribution system (WDS) whereby the frame format can handle four MAC addresses. The real-world deployments for WDSs are in bridges, repeaters, and mesh networks.
WDSs can be used to connect WAPs to form a wireless backbone. This can be particularly useful when WAPs are used to provide both coverage and backhaul simultaneously. However, to do this successfully, the WAP needs to have two separate transmitter/receiver channels. (It is possible ...
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