How WLAN works

A network without wires! WOW! Well, now it is a reality as more and more companies are going wireless. But how does a wireless LAN or WLAN work?

The basic difference is that a wireless LAN uses radio frequencies instead of wires to securely transmit data. There are small antennas that are discreetly suspended from the ceiling, which relay information between a computer and the Internet at speeds up to 11Mbps. This is even faster than a T-1 line and many times faster than dial-up access.

If antennas are placed within the office at strategic places then even the entire building can become a WLAN ?hot spot?. And if this happens, then within that area, a subscriber will be able to access the Internet anywhere, anytime and that too without having to search for a telephone connection. The subscriber will need to just have a computer that is equipped with a WLAN access card, which is about the size of a credit card. Now isn?t that simply lovely?

So a wireless LAN is made up of two components.

• Wireless access cards for PC, PDA or laptop.
• Wireless base stations, which form the gateways that allow users to connect to the wired network.

Wireless base stations function only as access points and are not joined with each other without wires. They simply rely on the underlying wired network to move data between them. Users can only be attached to one wireless access point at a time. This makes WLAN a ?shared medium?. All users who are attached to a single access point have to share the total radio bandwidth that is available from it.

For instance, in an 11Mbps 802.11b system with 10 users connected, all 10 users are sharing the 11Mbps that is available. 802.11g and 802.11a can deliver a maximum of 54Mbps, but the users still share the bandwidth.

In wired networks, most users have a 100Mbps connection all to themselves.

In spite of this however, there are definite advantages of a WLAN. Such as mobility.