For some of the reasons, it is often advantageous for a network to include
some wireless nodes. Few of the basic reasons are as follow:
You cannot drill the walls and roofs in some places, for example, the
hotel's lobby, historical buildings, or any other prohibited area.
Some professionals or users need to move around, for them, fixed-computers
are not suitable, for example, network administrators, nurses, or doctors
when they make rounds.
When you install the network on temporary basis.
The travelers or tourists may need to have laptop all the time with them,
for them it is not possible to keep the long wire of cabled-network right
from New York till Hawaii.
Typically, though, the wireless nodes will be part of what is otherwise a
traditional, cable-based network.
An
access point is a stationary transceiver connected to the
cable-based LAN that enables the cordless PC to communicate with the
network. The access point acts as a conduit for the wireless PC. The process
is initiated when the wireless PC sends a signal to the access point; from
there, the signal reaches the network. The truly wireless communication,
there fore, is the communication from the wireless PC to the access point.
An access point transceiver is one of several ways to achieve wireless networking.
NOTE: Wireless network doesn't means that the cable will never be
used. Usually wireless computers and cable-based network work together to
form an Extended LAN. This LAN is actually the wireless network. You can classify wireless LAN communications according to transmission methods are as follows:
1. Infrared
2. Laser
3. Narrow-Band Radio
4. Spread-Spectrum Radio
Rest of the article will focus on these transmission methods of wireless communication.
Infrared Transmission
You use an infrared communication system every time you control your
television with a remote control. The remote control transmits pulses of
infrared light that carry coded instructions to a receiver on the TV. This
technology also can be adapted to network communications.
Four varieties of infrared communications are as follow:
Broadband Optical Telepoint:
This method uses broadband technology. Data transfer rates in this high-end