A wireless local area network (WLAN) is a local area network (LAN) that doesn't rely on wired Ethernet connections.

A WLAN can be either an extension to a current wired network or an alternative to it. WLANs have data transfer speeds ranging from 1 to 54Mbps, with some manufacturers offering proprietary 108Mbps solutions. The 802.11n standard can reach 300 to 600Mbps. Because the wireless signal is broadcast so everybody nearby can share it, several security precautions are necessary to ensure only authorized users can access your WLAN. A WLAN signal can be broadcast to cover an area ranging in size from a small office to a large campus. Most commonly, a WLAN access point provides access within a radius of 65 to 300 feet.

What is Wireless Lan A wireless LAN or WLAN is a wireless local area network that uses radio waves as its carrier: the last link with the users is wireless, to give a network connection to all users in a building or campus. The backbone network usually uses cables. WLAN is expected to be an important form of connection in many business areas. The market is expected to grow as the benefits of WLAN are recognized. Frost and Sullivan estimate the WLAN market to have been 0.3 billion US dollars in 1998 and 1.6 billion dollars in 2005. So far WLANs have been installed primarily in warehouses and resellers, but are recently being installed in various kinds of schools. Large future markets are estimated to be in health care, educational institutes and corporate offices. In the business environment, meeting places, public areas and side offices would be ideal for WLAN. WLAN is an alternative to cabled LAN in places where cabling is difficult or impossible. Such places could be old protected buildings or classrooms. WLAN installations are also cheap because they consist only of the access points and backbone network installations, the last part of the network being in the air.

Wireless LAN Networking

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Introduction
Wireless technology has helped to simplify networking by enabling multiple computer users to simultaneously share resources in a home or business without additional or intrusive wiring. These resources might include a broadband Internet connection, network printers, data files, and even streaming audio and video. This kind of resource sharing has become more prevalent as computer users have changed their habits from using single, stand-alone computers to working on networks with multiple computers, each with potentially different operating systems and varying peripheral hardware. U.S. Robotics wireless networking products offer a variety of solutions to seamlessly integrate computers, peripherals, and data. Wireless networking enables the same capabilities and comparable speeds of a wired 10BASE-T network without the difficulties associated with laying wire, drilling into walls, or stringing Ethernet cables throughout an office building or home. Laptop users have the freedom to roam anywhere in the office building or home without having to hunt down a connector cable or available jack. Every room in a wireless home or office can be connected to the network, so adding more users and growing a network can be as simple as installing a new wireless network adapter. Reasons to choose wireless networking over traditional wired networks include: Running additional wires or drilling new holes in a home or office could be prohibited (because of rental regulations), impractical (infrastructure limitations), or too expensive Flexibility of location and data ports is required Roaming capability is desired; e.g., maintaining connectivity from almost anywhere inside a home or business Network access is desired outdoors; e.g.,

outside a home or office building

Wireless LANs in the Office

An 802.11 network is the ideal solution for a network administrator in many respects. No longer is it a requirement that every workstation and conference room be wired up to hubs and switches with cables in hard-to-reach areas. Wireless networking allows for impromptu meetings in cafeterias, hallways, courtyards, or wherever inspiration strikes while providing real-time LAN connectivity for business applications such as sending e-mail, working on spreadsheets on shared drives, and conducting market research.

Wireless LANs in the Home

Wireless networking has become commonplace, and with prices reduced to a fraction of what they were, it is no wonder that wireless networking products have transitioned from the office and into the home. For the home user, a wireless network provides freedom in convenience and lifestyle to exchange words, data, and music or video with any computer across the Internet, or around the world. Home users can create a wireless network out of an existing wired network and wirelessly extend the reach of the Internet throughout the home on multiple computers, making it more convenient for everyone to get online.

A wireless local area network (WLAN) links two or more devices using some wireless distribution method (typically spread-spectrum or OFDM radio), and usually providing a connection through an access point to the wider internet. This gives users the mobility to move around within a local coverage area and still be connected to the network. Most modern WLANs are based on IEEE 802.11 standards, marketed under the Wi-Fi brand name. Wireless LANs have become popular in the home due to ease of installation, and the increasing to offer wireless access to their customers; often for free. Large wireless network projects are being put up in many major cities: New York City, for instance, has begun a pilot program to provide city workers in all five boroughs of the city with wireless Internet access.[1]

What is Wireless Lan A wireless LAN or WLAN is a wireless local area network that uses radio waves as its carrier: the last link with the users is wireless, to give a network connection to all users in a building or campus. The backbone network usually uses cables. WLAN is expected to be an important form of connection in many business areas. The market is expected to grow as the benefits of WLAN are recognized. Frost and Sullivan estimate the WLAN market to have been 0.3 billion US dollars in 1998 and 1.6 billion dollars in 2005. So far WLANs have been installed primarily in warehouses and resellers, but are recently being installed in various kinds of schools. Large future markets are estimated to be in health care, educational institutes and corporate offices. In the business environment, meeting places, public areas and side offices would be ideal for WLAN. WLAN is an alternative to cabled LAN in places where cabling is difficult or impossible. Such places could be old protected buildings or classrooms. WLAN installations are also cheap because they consist only of the access points and backbone network installations, the last part of the network being in the air.

Wireless LAN
Main article: Wireless LAN A wireless local area network (WLAN) links two or more devices over a short distance using a wireless distribution method, usually providing a connection through an access point for Internet access. The use of spread-spectrum or OFDM technologies may allow users to move around within a local coverage area, and still remain connected to the network. Products using the IEEE 802.11 WLAN standards are marketed under the Wi-Fi brand name. Fixed wireless technology implements point-to-point links between computers or networks at two distant locations, often using dedicated microwave or modulated laser light beams over line of sight paths. It is often used in cities to connect networks in two or more buildings without installing a wired link.

Benefits of Wireless LAN

The popularity of wireless LANs is a testament primarily to their convenience, cost efficiency, and ease of integration with other networks and network components. The majority of computers sold to consumers today come pre-equipped with all necessary wireless LAN technology. The benefits of wireless LANs include:

Convenience - The wireless nature of such networks allows users to access network resources from nearly any convenient location within their primary networking environment (home or office). With the increasing saturation of laptop-style computers, this is particularly relevant. Mobility - With the emergence of public wireless networks, users can access the internet even outside their normal work environment. Most chain coffee shops, for example, offer their customers a wireless connection to the internet at little or no cost. Productivity - Users connected to a wireless network can maintain a nearly constant affiliation with their desired network as they move from place to place. For a business, this implies that an employee can potentially be more productive as his or her work can be accomplished from any convenient location. Deployment - Initial setup of an infrastructure-based wireless network requires little more than a single access point. Wired networks, on the other hand, have the additional cost and complexity of actual physical cables being run to numerous locations (which can even be impossible for hard-to-reach locations within a building). Expandability - Wireless networks can serve a suddenly-increased number of clients with the existing equipment. In a wired network, additional clients would require additional wiring. Cost - Wireless networking hardware is at worst a modest increase from wired counterparts. This potentially increased cost is almost always more than outweighed by the savings in cost and labor associated to running physical cables. Wi-Fi chipset pricing continues to come down, making Wi-Fi a very economical networking option and driving inclusion of Wi-Fi in an ever-widening array of devices.

Disadvantages of Wireless LAN

Wireless LAN technology, while replete with the conveniences and advantages described above, has its share of downfalls. For a given networking situation, wireless LANs may not be desirable for a number of reasons. Most of these have to do with the inherent limitations of the technology.

Security - Wireless LAN transceivers are designed to serve computers throughout a structure with uninterrupted service using radio frequencies. Because of space and cost, the "antennas" typically present on wireless networking cards in the end computers are generally relatively poor. In order to properly receive signals using such limited antennas throughout even a modest area, the wireless LAN transceiver utilizes a fairly considerable amount of power. What this means is that not only can

the wireless packets be intercepted by a nearby adversary's poorly-equipped computer, but more importantly, a user willing to spend a small amount of money on a good quality antenna can pick up packets at a remarkable distance; perhaps hundreds of times the radius as the typical user. In fact, there are even computer users dedicated to locating and sometimes even hacking into wireless networks, known as wardrivers. On a wired network, any adversary would first have to overcome the physical limitation of tapping into the actual wires, but this is not an issue with wireless packets. To combat this consideration, wireless network users usually choose to utilize various encryption technologies available such as WPA. Some of the older encryption methods, such as WEP, are known to have weaknesses that a dedicated adversary can compromise. Range - The typical range of a common 802.11g network with standard equipment is on the order of tens of meters. While sufficient for a typical home, it will be insufficient in a larger structure. Range varies with frequency band, as Wi-Fi is no exception to the physics of radio wave propagation. To obtain additional range, repeaters or additional access points will have to be purchased. Costs for these items can add up quickly. Other technologies are in the development phase, however, which feature increased range, hoping to render this disadvantage irrelevant. Reliability - Like any radio frequency transmission, wireless networking signals are subject to a wide variety of interference, as well as complex propagation effects (such as multipath, or especially in this case Rician fading) that are beyond the control of the network administrator. In the case of typical networks, modulation is achieved by complicated forms of phase-shift keying (PSK) or quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), making interference and propagation effects all the more disturbing. As a result, important network resources such as servers are rarely connected wirelessly. Also, many 2.4 GHz 802.11b and 802.11g Access points default to the same channel, contributing to congestion on certain channels. Speed - The speed on most wireless networks (typically 1-108 Mbps) is reasonably slow compared to the slowest common wired networks (100Mbit/s up to several Gbit/s). There are also performance issues caused by TCP and its built-in congestion avoidance. For most users, however, this observation is irrelevant since the speed bottleneck is not in the wireless routing but rather in the outside network connectivity itself. For example, the maximum ADSL throughput (usually 8Mbit/s or less) offered by telecommunications companies to general-purpose customers is already far slower than the slowest wireless network to which it is typically connected. That is to say, in most environments, a wireless network running at its slowest speed is still faster than the internet connection serving it in the first place. However, in specialized environments, the throughput of a wired network might be necessary. Newer standards such as 802.11n are addressing this limitation and will support peak throughputs in the range of 100-200 Mbit/s. Energy - Power consumption is fairly high compared to some other standards, making battery life and heat a concern.