4. Glossary

Access Point: An internetworking device that seamlessly connects wired and wireless networks.

Ad-Hoc:An independent wireless LAN network formed by a group of computers, each with a network adapter.

AP Client: One of the additional AP operating modes offered by 54Mbps Access Point, which allows the Access Point to act as an Ethernet-to-Wireless Bridge, thus a LAN or a single computer station can join a wireless ESS network through it.

ASCII: American Standard Code for Information Interchange, ASCII, is one of the two formats that you can use for entering the values for WEP key. It represents English letters as numbers from 0 to 127.

Authentication Type: Indication of an authentication algorithm which can be supported by the Access Point:

1.Open System: Open System authentication is the simplest of the available authentication algorithms. Essentially it is a null authentication algorithm. Any station that requests authentication with this algorithm may become authenticated if 802.11 Authentication Type at the recipient station is set to Open System authentication.

2.Shared Key: Shared Key authentication supports authentication of stations as either a member of those who knows a shared secret key or a member of those who does not.

Backbone: The core infrastructure of a network, which transports information from one central location to another where the information is unloaded into a local system.

Bandwidth: The transmission capacity of a device, which is calculated by how much data the device can transmit in a fixed amount of time expressed in bits per second (bps).

Beacon: A beacon is a packet broadcast by the Access Point to keep the network synchronized. Included in a beacon are information such as wireless LAN service area, the AP address, the Broadcast destination addresses, time stamp, Delivery Traffic Indicator Maps, and the Traffic Indicator Message (TIM).

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