Introduction
Preface
First, I would like to thank Criss Hyde for constantly staying on my
case about details. This book is all about details, and let me say right
now in writing that there are lots of them in the 802.11 series of
standards. They are written for rocket scientists who have law degrees.
Luckily, Criss is one of those people.
I have learned more technical details while writing this book than I ever
wanted to know about anything, ever. When I began writing this book,
I only thought I knew this material. Now, I know enough to know that
I’ll never be able to keep all of it straight in my head. Referencing
back to the standards from time to time is necessary unless you’ve
opted for Google appliance integration surgery.
This whole experience has been mostly one of learning and re-learning.
There’s nothing worse than committing something to memory – only to
find out it is wrong and you have to start again from scratch. I have
done exactly that over and over throughout the writing (and rewriting)
of this book. I equate the current series of 802.11 standards to a
mystery novel. As you’re reading, there are many twists and turns, but
it’s not until you’ve read the last page of the last standard that the light
comes on in your head. Of course, to be totally honest, you have to
read the novel (meaning the standards) several times to get the light to
come on, and even then, the light is somewhat dim at times.
My wish for all of the readers of this book is to suffer less, if only
slightly, than I have in learning all of this material. I can’t imagine
anything better than having all of the 802.11 facts in one text in a
digestible format. That’s what this book is meant to be. The 802.11
series of standards is often called the “Mother of All Standards.” I
think that nickname is very appropriate.
I have trained a great number of the CWNTs out there, and a trait
common to most of them is constantly asking, “How does it work?”
and “Why does it work that way?” In the CWNA and CWSP classes,
there’s a modest amount of answers for those types of questions, but
extreme detail is missing due to time constraints. To some degree, the
