Chapter 2: Planning Your Wireless Network; Network Topology - Cisco WAP2000 Administration Manual

Planning Your Wireless Network

Network Topology

Cisco WAP2000 Wireless-G Access Point with Power Over Ethernet Administration Guide
Before deploying your WAP2000 Wireless-G Access Point with Power Over
Ethernet, take some time to plan your wireless network.
This chapter includes the following topics:
• Network Topology, page 2
• Roaming, page 3
• Network Layout, page 3
• Example of a Simple Wireless Network, page 4
A wireless network is a group of computers, each equipped with one or more
wireless adapters. Computers in a wireless network must be configured to share
the same radio channel to talk to each other. Several computers equipped with
wireless cards or adapters can communicate with each other to form an ad-hoc
network without the use of an access point.
Cisco wireless adapters also provide access to a wired network when using an
access point or wireless router. An integrated wireless and wired network is
called an infrastructure network. Each wireless computer in an infrastructure
network can talk to any computer in a wired or wireless network via the access
point or wireless router.
An infrastructure configuration extends the accessibility of a wireless computer to
a wired network, and may double the effective wireless transmission range for
two wireless adapter computers.
Because an access point can forward data within a network, the effective
transmission range in an infrastructure network may be doubled (depending on
antenna characteristics).
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