Copyright © 2004-2005, Vivato, Inc.
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Glossary
802
IEEE 802
) is a family of standards for peer-to-peer communication over a
These technologies use a shared-medium, with information broadcast for all stations to receive. The basic
communications capabilities provided are packet-based. The basic unit of transmission is a sequence of
data octets (8-bits), which can be of any length within a range that is dependent on the type of
.
Included in the 802 family of
standards are definitions of bridging, management, and security
protocols.
802.1x
IEEE 802.1x
(
) is a standard for passing
packets over an
network using a protocol called
EAP Encapsulation Over LANs
(EAPOL). It establishes a framework that
supports multiple authentication methods.
IEEE
802.1x authenticates users not machines.
802.2
IEEE
802.2 (
) defines the
layer for the
family of standards.
802.3
IEEE 802.3
) defines the
example of such a network.
802.11
IEEE 802.11
) is a medium access control (
) and physical layer (
)
specification for wireless connectivity for fixed, portable, and moving stations within a local area. It uses
direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) in the 2.4 GHz ISM band and supports raw data rates of 1 and 2
Mbps. It was formally adopted in 1997 but has been mostly superseded by
IEEE
802.11 is also used generically to refer to the family of
standards for wireless local area
networks.
802.11a
IEEE 802.11a operates in the 5 GHz ISM band of frequencies.
802.11b
IEEE 802.11b
(
) is an enhancement of the initial
to include 5.5 Mbps
and 11 Mbps data rates. It uses direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) or frequency hopping spread
spectrum (FHSS) in the 2.4 GHz ISM band as well as complementary code keying (CCK) to provide the
higher data rates. It supports data rates ranging from 1 to 11 Mbps.