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Wireless LAN Technology for SOHO. Instructor: Professor Mort Anvari Presented by: Yanfeng Wang Jie Lin. Road Map. What is a wireless LAN Advantage of wireless LAN Hardware Requirement WLAN Model Standards Issues to Be Solved Future. What Is A Wireless LAN (WLAN)?.
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Wireless LAN Technology for SOHO Instructor: Professor Mort Anvari Presented by: Yanfeng Wang Jie Lin
Road Map • What is a wireless LAN • Advantage of wireless LAN • Hardware Requirement • WLAN Model • Standards • Issues to Be Solved • Future
What Is A Wireless LAN (WLAN)? • A Wireless LAN is a LAN without conventional network cabling. • It is a flexible network that can either replace or extend a wired LAN to provide added functionality. • It relies on radio frequencies (RF) to transmit and receive data between computers.
Advantages of WLAN---Mobility • Users can move around and still remain connected to the network • It gives users greater flexibility to move computers anywhere in home or office and still have them be networked. • Networking computers in different rooms or on different floors might need the convenience of a WLAN.
Advantages of WLAN: Reliability • Cable fault is completely eliminated! • Wired network maybe reliable, but cable faults is still a problem, which can cripple network traffic, and tracking them down can take many hours. • Cables break makes metallic conductors rust or allow water to enter • Staff members accidentally cut cables • Workers do a shoddy job of splicing
Advantages of WLAN: Cost • Sometimes cabling is too costly or impossible • cabling between buildings can be expensive • impossible due to structural hurdles or digging restrictions • Long-term cost concerns: Recabling can be expensive, time-consuming, disruptive. • Company Reorganization moves employee around, reconfigure offices, and add new buildings. • Home Renovation:Children move out, Adult switch around, add rooms or initiate remodeling projects.
Hardware Requirement • Wireless NIC and PCMCIA • Wireless Hub (Access Point) • Wireless Bridge
Wireless NIC/PCMCIA • Wireless adapters are made in the same form factors as their wired counterparts - PCI, PCMCIA, and USB. • Adapters for wired LAN provide the interface between the network operating system and the wire. • Adapters for WLAN provide the interface between the network operating system and an antenna, to create a transparent connection to the network.
Wireless Hub (Access Point) • Access Point is the wireless equivalent of a LAN hub. • It use antenna to receive, buffer and transmit data among the member computers of a WLAN • An Access Point can be connected with the wired backbone through standard Ethernet cable.
Wireless Hub (Access Point ) • Like the cells in a cellular phone network, multiple Access Points can support roaming from one Access Point to another as the user moves from area to area • Access Points have ranges from 20 meters to 500 meters • A single Access Point can support 15 to 250 users, depending on the technology and configuration.
Wireless Hub (Access Point) • It is easy to scale up WLANs by adding more Access Points, which decreases network congestion and enlarges the coverage area. • Large facilities require deployment of multiple Access Points to create overlapping cells for constant connectivity to the network.
Wireless LAN Bridge • Outdoor LAN bridges connect LANs in different buildings. • highways • bodies of water • It provides a less expensive alternative to recurring leased-line charges. • It supports fairly high data rates and ranges of several miles with the use of line-of-sight directional antennas.
WLAN-Peer to Peer Model • It consists of two or more PCs equipped with wireless NICs, but with no connection to a wired network. • It is principally used to quickly and easily set up a WLAN where no infrastructure is available • a convention center • a trade fair • No Access Point is needed.
WLAN-Client/Server Model • It typically consists of multiple computers (both the servers and the clients) equipped with wireless NICs and an Access Point that acts as a traffic center of the WLAN
Mixed Model • Wired LAN and wireless LAN are not mutually exclusive. • Wired LANs and wireless LANs can join seamlessly.
Price: Current Not for shallow pockets • Expensive compared to wired LAN • Wireless NIC: $40 up • Wireless PCMCIA: $100 up • Wireless Hub: $200 up • Don’t worry, it is quickly dropping!
Where To Buy? • Electric Appliance Retailers: • BestBuy, Circuit City, CompUSA • Online Retail Stores: • buy.com, egghead.com • Manufacturer’s Online Store • sohoware.com, cisco.com
Major Hardware Manufacturers Intel Cisco 3Com Lucent Netgear SOHOWare
Standards---802.11 • Like all IEEE 802 standards, the 802.11 standard focuses on the bottom two levels of the ISO model, the physical layer and data link layer. • Any LAN application, network operating system or protocol, including TCP/IP, will run on 802.11 compliant WLANs as easily as they run over Ethernet.
Potential for Improvement • Predictability: • Walls, large appliances, and other obstacles can interfere with the propagation of radio waves, degrading the network’s performance. • Security: • with the network access code, anyone within the broadcast area can eavesdrop on network communications. • Speed: • The current speed of 1Mbps to 11Mbps makes it difficult to stream video across wireless network and get good results. • Results with audio are better, but still not optimum.
Future Growth • 75 percent of large organizations are evaluating WLANs • More than 90 percent of all communications traffic consists of data and not voice, which represents a huge potential of growth for wireless data communication. • Laptops now make up about 25 percent of corporate purchases (Intel Corporate Market Research, 2000). • Analysts agree that the WLAN market is set to reach $1.6 to $2.2 billion by 2005.
Summary • It is there! • It is nice! • It’s cost is quickly dropping! • It’s the direction of the future!