Wireless Communication (802.11)

By Raul Bernardino

Introduction:

Nowadays, internet becomes resource or media for the information seeker, and also it is using the internet media to communicate with his or her relatives, at anytime and anywhere. The internet also becomes a place where the business players found themselves to operate on, such as e-commerce, e-businesses, way or media to communicate to the branch offices, and etc.

Almost every nation has the access of the internet and it is very simple connection to communicate with the destination host and browser the information from it over the networks. The internet is a collection of the hosts that connect through the larger networks in the world wide. The communication among hosts can be over dial up using the telephone infrastructure or use the satellite link in which is point to point communication.

The scope of the internet is to let users to interact each other as follows:

• Simple connection through Personal Computer (PC) and with local telecom infrastructure or Internet Service Provider (ISP)
• Email exchange with any that have email account on the internet
• Place where people are posting their information to the public in order to allow global user are able to access and view the information
• Place where people can accessing the multimedia such as video streaming, pictures, sounds, and some graphics
• Place where people can putting in their perspectives from the globe

All activities over internet are governed by protocols. “Protocols are running everywhere in the internet however with the common approach it is about computer networks protocols”, Kurose J.F. and Ross K.W., (2010). Protocols are defining as the way how to exchange the messages from one end to the other end.

The wireless communications are”based on the IEEE 802.11 technology” Kurose J.F. and Ross K.W., (2010).

The 802.11 technology is standard wireless that can be use as:

• Point to point or peer to peer communication and it can be integrated to the wired local area network (WLAN).
• The mobility of the devices that have a proper configuration, can be traveled in the range of the multiple wireless communication
• The wireless may has an overlapping signal from different access points
• The security of the wireless communication in which can use SSID and password or use MAC filtering

In Timor-Leste, we have no regulation yet to regulate wireless communication in the city. Therefore there is lots of overlapping wireless signals in the city.

How do we access the internet from home? I do have an access point in which is pointing back to the office. The access point are operating in 2.4 GHz. This access point is connecting to the wireless router Linksys (IEEE 802.11.g) with 54 Mbps. The cost of this wireless router is $95 USD. With this wireless router, I configured the SSID and password for users to connect mobiles, laptops and others PCs. There are also 3G from telecom operator; however the 3G modem is expensive including the data rate price.

Reference List:

1.     Kurose James, Ross Keith, 2010;’Computer Networking; A Top-Down Approach: 5^th Edition’; Boston, Addison-Wesley

2.     Lecture notes, CPCOMM_week1_lecture

3.     What is the Internet [on-line]. Available from: http://www.centerspan.org/tutorial/net.htm  (Accessed date: August 6, 2011)

4.      Sharma, Raju; Singh, Gurpal; Agnihotri, Rahul, 2010, Comparison of performance analysis of 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g standard: International Journal on Computer Science & Engineering, Vol. 2 Issue 6, [on-line]. Available from: http://ehis.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.liv.ac.uk/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=0ca1d7c2-1267-4045-ad74-e4abaf8e7559%40sessionmgr115&vid=1&hid=103  (Accessed date: August 6, 2011)