Lecture 3 Wireless Standards & Network Architecture

Wireless Networks
Lecture 3 Wireless Standards & Network Architecture

Wireless Standards:
Regulatory standards regarding wireless use and technologies exist to guide us and act as a reference point for interoperability, efficiency, and other aspects of wireless technologies.

Standards are important for several reasons, including the following:
?? Interoperability Standards help to promote interoperability among devices made by different vendors. Individual vendors can build their devices to conform to a particular standard, ensuring that their devices will be able to work together.
?? Efficiency Every vendor can reuse existing solutions that a particular standard has addressed, instead of having to re-create individual solutions.
?? Prevention of vendor lock-in Standards give technology consumers the freedom to choose and buy whatever products they like, which helps to reduce or prevent consumers being locked into solutions provided by particular vendors. When solutions are designed according to standards and specifications, third-party vendors can provide continued support or complementary solutions when an original vendor is no longer able or willing to support its products.

IEEE 802.3:
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.3 standard is a collection of IEEE standards that define the properties as well as the working characteristics of the Physical Layer and Data Link Layer’s media access control (MAC) sublayer of wired Ethernet.
IEEE 802.3 has the feel and functionality that most wireless standards want to emulate, and it is especially concerned with local area network (LAN) technologies, with a nod to some wide area network (WAN) applications since WANs are simply a collection of individual LANs.