Going Wi-Fi: A Practical Guide to Planning and Building an 802.11 Network

This alphabet soup of standards can lead to confusion in the marketplace. Specific Tasking Groups inside the 802.11 Working Group oversee enhancements ranging from bandwidth to specific technical aspects of the 802.11 standard. The appearance of each new "flavor" of the technology results in a new suffix to 802.11, i.e. 802.11a, 802.11b, up to 802.11n (at the time of this writing).

These amendments and supplements help to assure that the 802.11 series can resolve compatibility issues between manufacturers of wireless local area network equipment operating in specific frequency bands. The series also provides the ability for a wireless data communications system to be implemented either as an extension to, or as an alternative for, a wired local area network.

Now let's take an in depth look at each member in the 802.11 family.