ConnectGear WA300 - Manual (Page 31)

11Mbps Wireless Access Point User's Manual
Q: What is the IEEE 802.11b standard?
A: The IEEE 802.11b Wireless LAN standards subcommittee, which is formulating a
standard for the industry. The objective is to enable wireless LAN hardware from different
manufacturers to communicate.
Q: What’s Ad-hoc?
A: An Ad-hoc wireless LAN is a group of computers, each with a WLAN adapter, connected
as an independent wireless LAN. Ad-hoc wireless LAN is applicable at a departmental scale
for a branch or SOHO operation.
Q: What is Infrastructure?
A: An integrated wireless and wired LAN is called an Infrastructure configuration.
Infrastructure is applicable to enterprise scale for wireless access to central database, or
wireless application for mobile workers.
Q: What is Roaming?
A: Roaming is the ability of a portable computer user to communicate continuously while
moving freely throughout an area greater than that covered by a single Wireless Network
Access Point. Before using the roaming function, the workstation must make sure that it is
the same SSID with the Wireless Access Point of dedicated coverage area.
Q: What is Spread Spectrum?
A: Spread Spectrum technology is a wideband radio frequency technique developed by the
military for use in reliable, secure, mission-critical communications systems. It is designed
to trade off bandwidth efficiency for reliability, integrity, and security. In the other words,
more bandwidth is consumed than in the case of narrowband transmission, but the trade off
produces a signal that is, in effect, louder and thus easier to detect, provided that the
receiver knows the parameters of the spread-spectrum signal being broadcast. If a receiver
is not turned to the right frequency, a spread-spectrum signal looks like background noise.
There are two main alternatives, Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) and Frequency
Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS).
Q: What is WEP?
A: WEP is Wired Equivalent Privacy, a data privacy mechanism based on a 64-bit or 128-bit
as described in the IEEE 802.11 standard.
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