Introduction to WLAN

A WLAN is a LAN that uses radio waves as the physical medium. In a traditional
wired LAN, individual network stations are linked via some type of physical
cabling.This cabling can vary from shielded copper wires to fiber-optic cables.
Most office structures are wired throughout to facilitate networking using this
medium.
The three main problems with physical cabling are cost, distance limitations,
and mobility.The installation of any type of physical cabling requires a great deal
of effort and is therefore very expensive.The cost to wire an average sized office
building can be thousands of dollars. In addition, there are physical limitations as
to the length of any given physical cabling scheme.These distances vary
depending on the type of cable used, but there is always a defined maximum distance
that the signal can travel along the cable before it deteriorates.To send a
signal any farther than this maximum distance requires additional hardware to
boost the power of the signal. Lastly, using physical cables becomes inconvenient
when network users need to be mobile. A good example is a sales representative
that must carry a laptop to different conference rooms to make presentations
using data on the LAN. Assuming that all of the conference rooms are wired into
the LAN, the sales representative would have to carry a cable to connect into any
conference room that they visit, find the appropriate wall jack, and connect into
the network.
With a WLAN, most of the physical cabling (such as Cat 5 for client desktop
connections) becomes unnecessary as you are now using radio waves to carry
your signal. In a typical WLAN design, the only cables used are those necessary to connect devices that do not support wireless networks. As this technology
evolves, devices that support wireless networking are becoming more prevalent
and easier to find.
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