Sunday 15 May 2011

How do wireless network work?

Wireless networks use radio waves rather than wires to send data between computers. How it works as follows:

Binary Code: 1s and 0s
It is well known that computers transmit information digitally, using binary code: one and zero. This means both for radio waves, because they are the 1s and 0s can be represented by different kinds of beeps. Bip is very fast so that they are beyond the reach of human hearing.

Morse Code: Dots And dash
It works like Morse code, which is a way to send the alphabet over radio waves using dots (short beeps) and dashes (long beeps). Morse Code used manually for years via telegraph to get information from one place to another very quickly. More importantly for this example, though, it is a binary system, just as the computer system.
Wireless networking, then, can be regarded as the Morse code for computers. You enter a combined radio receiver and transmitter, and the computer can send equivalent of dots and dashes (bits, in computer-speak) to get your data from here to there.
Wavelength and Frequency
You may be wondering how a computer can send and receive data at high speed without the nonsense becomes chaotic. The key to the wireless network is how it will cope with this problem.

First, wireless transmissions are sent at very high frequencies, which allows more data to be transmitted per second. Most wireless connections use a frequency of 2.4 gigahertz (2.4 billion cycles per second) - the same frequencies to mobile phones and microwave ovens. However, high frequency produces a very short wavelength, which wireless network to work effectively only on short distances.
Wireless networks also use a technique called "frequency hopping." They use dozens of frequencies, and constantly switch between them. This makes wireless networks more immune to interference from other radio signals unless they are sent on one frequency.

Internet Access Points
The final step for the wireless network is to provide Internet access to every computer on the network. This is done by a particular piece of equipment called a wireless access point. An access point is more expensive than a wireless card for 1 computer, because it contains radios capable of communicating with about 100 computers, sharing internet access among them. Dedicated access points are necessary only for larger networks. With only a few computers, it is possible to use 1 of them as an access point, or use a wireless router.

Industry Standards
Wireless equipment from different manufacturers can work together to handle complex communications because there are standards that guide the production of all wireless devices. These standards are technically called the 802.11. Because of industry compliance with these standards, wireless networking both easy to use and affordable today.
Wireless Is Simple to Use
 Wireless networking hardware and software handles all this automatically, without user intervention. wireless network, for all the complicated ability, is far simpler to use than you might expect.

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