Glossary
Disassociation | An IEEE 802.11 term that defines the process a station or Access Point uses |
service | to notify that it is terminating an existing association. |
Distribution service | An IEEE 802.11 station uses the distribution service to send MAC frames |
| across a distribution system. |
GPIO | General Purpose Input/Output refers to the digital I/O lines. |
Hot spot | Same as an Access Point (usually found in public areas such as coffee shops |
| and airports). |
IEEE | Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, an international organization |
| that develops standards for electrical technologies. The organization uses a |
| series of numbers, like the Dewey Decimal system in libraries, to differentiate |
| between the various technology families. |
Independent Basic | An IEEE |
Service Set Network | and consists of at least two wireless stations. This type of network is often |
(IBSS Network) | referred to as an |
| without too much planning. |
Infrastructure mode | A client setting providing connectivity to an Access Point. As compared to Ad- |
| Hoc mode, whereby PCs communicate directly with each other, clients set in |
| Infrastructure mode all pass data through a central Access Point. The Access |
| Point not only mediates wireless network traffic in the immediate |
| neighborhood, but also provides communication with the wired network. See |
| |
LAN application | A software application that runs on a computer (which is attached to a LAN, |
| Intranet or the Internet) and using various protocols, can communicate with |
| the Bridge. |
LEAP | Lightweight Extensible Authentication Protocol developed by Cisco. LEAP |
| provides |
| and a RADIUS server. It is one of several protocols used with the IEEE |
| 802.1X standard for LAN port access control. |
Local Area Network | A system of connecting PCs and other devices within the same physical |
| proximity for sharing resources such as Internet connections, printers, files |
| and drives. When |
| as a wireless LAN or WLAN. |
Medium Access | One of two |
Control Layer | model. The MAC layer is responsible for moving data packets to and from |
| one network node to another across a shared channel. |
| A wireless or wired computer network that has no server or central hub or |
network | router. All the networked PCs are equally able to act as a network server or |
| client, and each client computer can talk to all the other wireless computers |
| without having to go through an Access Point or hub. However, since there is |
| no central base station to monitor traffic or provide Internet access, the |
| various signals can collide with each other, reducing overall performance. |
Page 66 | AirborneDirect™ Ethernet Bridge User's Guide |