Question 2569 – Computer-Networks

There are several specifications in the 802.11 family:

802.11 — applies to wireless LANs and provides 1 or 2 Mbps transmission in the 2.4 GHz band using either frequency hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) or direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS).

802.11a — an extension to 802.11 that applies to wireless LANs and provides up to 54-Mbps in the 5GHz band. 802.11a uses an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing encoding scheme rather than FHSS or DSSS.

802.11b (also referred to as 802.11 High Rate or Wi-Fi) — an extension to 802.11 that applies to wireless LANS and provides 11 Mbps transmission (with a fallback to 5.5, 2 and 1-Mbps) in the 2.4 GHz band. 802.11b uses only DSSS. 802.11b was a 1999 ratification to the original 802.11 standard, allowing wireless functionality comparable to Ethernet.

802.11e — a wireless draft standard that defines the Quality of Service (QoS) support for LANs, and is an enhancement to the 802.11a and 802.11b wireless LAN (WLAN) specifications.

802.11g — applies to wireless LANs and is used for transmission over short distances at up to 54-Mbps in the 2.4 GHz bands.

802.11n — 802.11n builds upon previous 802.11 standards by adding multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO). The real speed would be 100 Mbit/s (even 250 Mbit/s in PHY level), and so up to 4-5 times faster than 802.11g.

802.11ac — 802.11ac builds upon previous 802.11 standards, particularly the 802.11n standard, to deliver data rates of 433Mbps per spatial stream, or 1.3Gbps in a three-antenna (three stream) design. The 802.11ac specification operates only in the 5 GHz frequency range and features support for wider channels (80MHz and 160MHz) and beamforming capabilities by default to help achieve its higher wireless speeds.

802.11ac Wave 2 — 802.11ac Wave 2 is an update for the original 802.11ac spec that uses MU-MIMO technology and other advancements to help increase theoretical maximum wireless speeds for the spec to 6.93 Gbps.

802.11ad — 802.11ad is a wireless specification under development that will operate in the 60GHz frequency band and offer much higher transfer rates than previous 802.11 specs, with a theoretical maximum transfer rate of up to 7Gbps (Gigabits per second).

802.11ah— Also known as Wi-Fi HaLow, 802.11ah is the first Wi-Fi specification to operate in frequency bands below one gigahertz (900 MHz), and it has a range of nearly twice that of other Wi-Fi technologies. It’s also able to penetrate walls and other barriers considerably better than previous Wi-Fi standards.

802.11r – 802.11r, also called Fast Basic Service Set (BSS) Transition, supports VoWi-Fi handoff between access points to enable VoIP roaming on a Wi-Fi network with 802.1X authentication.

802.1X — Not to be confused with 802.11x (which is the term used to describe the family of 802.11 standards) 802.1X is an IEEE standard for port-based Network Access Control that allows network administrators to restricted use of IEEE 802 LAN service access points to secure communication between authenticated and authorized devices.