8 Wireless Communication; Wireless Lan - Novell LINUX ENTERPRISE SERVER 11 - ADMINISTRATION Administration Manual

Wireless Communication
Wireless LAN can be used to establish communication between your SUSE® Linux
Enterprise Server machines. This chapter introduces the principles and basic configura-
tion of wireless networking.

18.1 Wireless LAN

Wireless LANs have become an indispensable aspect of mobile computing. Today,
most laptops have built-in WLAN cards. The 802.11 standard for the wireless commu-
nication of WLAN cards was prepared by the IEEE organization. Originally, this stan-
dard provided for a maximum transmission rate of 2 Mbit/s. Meanwhile, several sup-
plements have been added to increase the data rate. These supplements define details
such as the modulation, transmission output, and transmission rates (see
"Overview of Various WLAN Standards"
implement hardware with proprietary or draft features.
Table 18.1 Overview of Various WLAN Standards
Name
802.11 Legacy
802.11a
Band (GHz) Maximum
Transmission
Rate (Mbit/s)
2.4 2
5 54
(page 259)). Additionally, many companies
Note
Outdated; virtually no end
devices available
Less interference-prone
Table 18.1,
Wireless Communication
18
259