Wireless networks represent the newest technological advancement happening in the networking today. The change to get away from all the cables and mess and just connect has a phenomenal appeal. Instead of a physical set of wires running between network nodes, wireless networks use either radio waves or beams of infrared light to communicate with each other. And as a result, wireless networking:
• Free us from the need to work with cabling and grant us mobility
• Overcome the geographical boundaries
• Provides better option then DSL and cables for bringing broadband access

The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), an organization that defines industry-wide standards in the fields of electronics and computing, has set guidelines/standards for wireless networking commonly called the WI-FI (wireless fidelity) standard. Each of these wireless standards use cellular radio links to provide network connectivity to PCs and laptop computers through a transmitter/ receiver unit ( transceiver) generally known as an access point (AP) or wireless access point (WAP), which transmits and receives signals to and from the wireless network adapters.



With advantages come some disadvantages also. And same is the case with the wireless networking. Availability, speed and security are the three vital elements, which raise most doubts in our minds. Let us understand why these elements are main reasons to bother. Availability: Weather effects between you and the satellite reduces the signal power because of the interference caused by the induced electromegnetic waves due to mutual collision of clouds which can distort the signals and results in the poor performance.

Speed: Wireless networks can be slow as compared to their wired equivalents. Consider that copper-based network solution can give you speeds up to 100 Mbps on each PC on a switched network where as, a wireless network provides shared bandwidth at about 54Mbps. Security: As the data packets are traveling through the air instead of safely wrapped up inside network cabling, it raises concerns about its security. So v-arious methods have been designed to overcome this factor of security which make this technology more complex.