User's Guide

Glossary
802.11: An IEEE specification that defines wireless LAN (WLAN) data link and physical layers.
The specification includes data link layer media access control (MAC) sub-layer, and two sub-
layers of the physical (PHY) layer—a frequency-hopping spread-spectrum (FHSS) and a direct-
sequence spread-spectrum (DSSS).
802.11a: A supplement to the IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN (WLAN) specification that describes
transmission through the physical layer (PHY) based on orthogonal frequency division
multiplexing (OFDM), at a frequency of 5 GHz and data rates of up to 54 Mbps.
802.11b: A supplement to the IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN (WLAN) specification that describes
transmission through the physical layer (PHY) based on direct-sequence spread-spectrum
(DSSS), at a frequency of 2.4 GHz and data rates of up to 11 Mbps.
802.11g: A supplement to the IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN (WLAN) specification that describes
transmission through the physical layer (PHY) based on orthogonal frequency division
multiplexing (OFDM), at a frequency of 2.4 GHz and data rates of up to 54 Mbps.
802.11i: A supplement to the IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN (WLAN) specification for enhanced
security. It describes encryption protocols such as the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP)
and AES Counter-Mode Cipher Block Chaining Message Authentication Code Protocol (AES-
CCMP). These protocols provide replay protection, cryptographically keyed integrity checks,
and key derivation based on the IEEE 802.1X port authentication standard.
802.1D: The IEEE LAN specification for remote media access control (MAC) bridging.
802.1Q: The IEEE LAN specification for bridged virtual LANs (VLANs).
802.1X: The IEEE specification for port-based network access control. The 802.1X standard
based on the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) provides an authentication framework
that supports a variety of methods for authenticating and authorizing network access for wired
or wireless users.
802.2: IEEE specification that describes the logical link control (LLC) encapsulation common
to all 802 series LANs.
802.3: An IEEE LAN specification for a Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision
Detection (CSMA-CD) Ethernet network. The standard describes physical media. An 802.3
frame uses source and destination media access control (MAC) addresses to identify its
originator and receiver(s).
adaptive routing: A network routing mechanism where the data path from a source to a
destination Node depends on the current state of the network. Normally with adaptive routing,
routing information stored at each Node changes according to some algorithm that calculates
the best paths through the network.
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