Cabletron Systems 3Com manual Radio Basics

Radio Basics 15

AirConnect devices, like other Ethernet devices, have unique, hardware-encoded Media Access Control (MAC), or IEEE, addresses. MAC addresses determine the device sending or receiving data. A MAC address is a 48-bit number written as six hexadecimal bytes separated by colons. A typical MAC address might be:

00:A0:F8:24:9A:C8

The AP MAC address is printed on the bottom of the unit, as shown below.

Cellular Coverage The AP establishes an average communication range with wireless clients called a Home Service Area (HSA), or cell. When a wireless client is in a particular cell, the wireless client associates and communicates with the AP in that cell. Each cell has a Home Service Area Identifier (HSA_ID). Under the 802.11 standard, the MAC address of an AP represents its HSA_ID. The wireless client recognizes the AP it associates with using the HSA_ID. Adding APs to a LAN establishes more cells in an environment, creating a wireless network using the same NET_ID. This type of network is called a Wireless LAN Service Area (WSA), as shown below.