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Glossary
Glossary
Access Point
An Access Point (AP) is a wired controller that sends data to the
wireless NICs installed in your network computers, and receives
data back from them. An AP is often connected to the network
computer that has Internet access, or is directly connected to the
Internet by a DSL or cable modem. The AP then allows other
stations on your WLAN to access the Internet.
Ad-hoc mode
See
channel
Your wireless device communicates with other devices on your
WLAN over a specific channel. The channel is similar to a radio
channel—any wireless device linking to your wireless device must
be "tuned" to the same channel.
In Infrastructure mode, the channel is selected by the Access Point
or Wireless Router. It automatically selects a channel from the
range available for your geographical location (11 channels are
available for use in the United States) and communicates that
channel to your wireless device. In Ad Hoc mode only, you can set
the channel yourself.
device driver
A device driver is a software program that lets an adapter (such as
a PC card, PCI card, or USB adapter) or any other device (such as a
printer or CD-ROM drive) communicate with the computer that it's
connected to.
DHCP connection
Stands for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. A network
station set to
DHCP
is automatically assigned a new temporary
(
dynamic
) IP address, as required. Compare to