0 Wireless Communication; Wireless Lan - Novell LINUX ENTERPRISE DESKTOP 11 - ADMINISTRATION GUIDE 17-03-2009 Administration Manual

20
Wireless Communication
There are several possibilities for using your Linux system to communicate with other
computers, cellular phones, or peripheral devices. WLAN (wireless LAN) can be used
to network laptops. Bluetooth can be used to connect individual system components
(mouse, keyboard), peripheral devices, cellular phones, PDAs and individual computers
with each other. IrDA is mostly used for communication with PDAs or cellular phones.
Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), also known as 3G, can offer
several multimedia services such as browsing the Web or sending and receiving mes-
sages. This chapter introduces these technologies and their configuration.

20.1 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 Table 20.1,
"Overview of Various WLAN Standards" (page 272)). Additionally, many companies
implement hardware with proprietary or draft features.
Wireless Communication 271