IEEE 802.11
The name IEEE 802.11 in which "8 represents peace, the 0 represents love and the 2 represents harmony. The two 1s stand for gullible"?? Where does this piece of information come from? It is interesting to know though. The
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) put together a standard for wireless Ethernet back in 1997 sanctimoniously titled: 802.11.
Version
802.11 then branched out into a "b" version which pumped up the
transmission speed from a couple of megabits per second (Mbps) in the original version to up to 11 Mbps along with a few more tweaks. But this was not to last much longer as two more standards were introduced and are now being developed and deployed, 802.11a and 802.11g (this is worse than the TI calculator nomenclature). 802.11a operates at the 5-6 GHZ radio wave spectrum whereas the other 3 all work in the 2.4 GHZ wavelength (many cordless phones operate in this spectrum which can cause "fuzzy" interference, also known as static or loss of connection).
Properties
Both 802.11a and 802.11g are capable of even
faster speeds, both maxing out at around 54 Mbps. A couple of notes however, 802.11g is entirely backwards compatible with 802.11b and 802.11 whereas 802.11a is self-centered and is only compatible with 802.11 (and you thought RSS was annoying). And the maximum range for all of these versions is about 150 Texas feet which is equivalent to 45-50 meters.
With increasd demand of
VoIP, most PSTN users swith to
VoIP. Those countries have legalised the
VoIP, are trying to regulating
VoIP services as PSTN services are regulated. Today, the Federal Communications Commission of U.S. has ordered all
VoIP service providers to attach a sticker warning that traditional 911 services aren't available, those who do not provide 911 services. It also recently required
VoIP operators to support CALEA wiretap functionality.
IEEE standards
IEEE 802.11 is still in the process of being adopted as a standard by the
IEEE standards body. Although 802.11 provides a reliable means of wireless data transfer, some improvements to it have been proposed. For example, at Virginia Tech, research is being performed into ways in which the 802.11 network parameters can be dynamically adjusted to improve throughput [6] [7]. The use of wireless LANs is expected to increase dramatically in the future as businesses discover the enhanced productivity and the increased mobility that
wireless communications can provide in a society that is moving towards more connectionless connections.
