preview

Essay Wireless Area Networks

Better Essays

Wireless Area Networks

Wireless technology has become an increasingly crucial part of today's world. From health care and retail to academia across the world, wireless systems are improving the rate and ease with which data is sent and received. Two specific examples of the wireless technology used today personally and professionally are local area networks (LAN) and personal area networks (PAN).

A wireless local area network, or LAN is a flexible data communications system implemented as an augmentation to, or an alternative for a, wired local area network. These networks rely on electromagnetic airwaves to transmit and receive over a defined area, usually a few hundred feet. (Yahoo-wireless) In …show more content…

The key to making this possible is variation of frequencies. As long as concurrent frequencies are no being broadcasted in a given area, it is possible to have any number of radio transmissions taking place at a given time. One might ask with countless number of transmissions that could be occurring at a given time how is it possible to focus on just one stream of data? The answer again is achieved through radio frequency characteristics. Once data has been encoded into a given radio carrier, all one has to do to extract the information is have a receiver tuned into one specific frequency, while rejecting all others. These receiving and transmitting nodes are known as access points. In typical wireless LAN settings, these access points are in the form of small rectangular transmitting stations. Receiving access points, or LAN adapters, defined using 802.11EE coding, are implemented as PC cards in notebooks, palm pilots, and desktops, or as additional access points that serve to extend the area of the network. These adapters provide an interface between the network operating system and the radio waves. (Rho Wireless/ Home Networking and Internet Connection Sharing)

Because wireless technology has its roots in military applications, all wireless systems contain varying degrees of security for their users. More often then not each individual network with have a unique encryption

Get Access