D-Link DWL-8500AP - AirPremier AG Wireless Switching 108 Dualband Access Point Administrator's Manual page 60

D-Link Unified Access Point Administrator's Guide
Table 16. Radio Settings
Field
Beacon Interval
DTIM Period
Fragmentation
Threshold
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Description
Enter a value from 20 to 2000 milliseconds.
Beacon frames are transmitted by an access point at regular
intervals to announce the existence of the wireless network. The
default behavior is to send a beacon frame once every 100
milliseconds (or 10 per second).
Specify a DTIM period from 1-255 beacons.
The Delivery Traffic Information Map (DTIM) message is an
element included in some Beacon
stations, currently sleeping in low-power mode, have data buffered
on the access point awaiting pick-up.
The DTIM period you specify indicates how often the clients
served by this access point should check for buffered data still on
the AP awaiting pickup.
The measurement is in beacons. For example, if you set this field
to 1, clients will check for buffered data on the AP at every beacon.
If you set this field to 10, clients will check on every 10th beacon.
Specify a number between 256 and 2,346 to set the frame size
threshold in bytes.
The fragmentation threshold is a way of limiting the size of frames
transmitted over the network. If a packet exceeds the fragmentation
threshold, the fragmentation function is activated and the packet is
sent as multiple 802.11 frames.
If the packet being transmitted is equal to or less than the threshold,
fragmentation is not used.
Setting the threshold to the largest value (2,346 bytes) effectively
disables fragmentation.
Fragmentation involves more overhead both because of the extra
work of dividing up and reassembling of frames it requires, and
because it increases message traffic on the network. However,
fragmentation can help improve network performance and
reliability if properly configured.
Sending smaller frames (by using lower fragmentation threshold)
might help with some interference problems; for example, it might
help with microwave oven interference.
By default, fragmentation is off. We recommend not using
fragmentation unless you suspect radio interference. The additional
headers applied to each fragment increase the overhead on the
network and can greatly reduce throughput.
frames. It indicates which client