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  • I'm new in wireless. Currenty, I'm trying to understand the relationship between the operational of WNIC in the OSI model.

    My Understanding is that WNIC operates in the layer 1 and 2 of the OSI model. In layer 1, the WNIC pretty much handle the actual data transmission. However, in the layer 2, the WNIC performs wireless management and also actual packet extraction.
    Wireless has different frame structure than ethernet Frame.If we connect the wireless to the internet, the packet has to be converted to Ethernet Frame because the wireless frame is essentially move through the LAN cable.

    My question:

    1. Where's the Ethernet Frame? Is it inside the Frame body? Or the Frame body only contains for example the TCP/IP packet, and then the router's layer 2 module will translate the wireless frame and then reconstruct the ethernet frame (taking the frame body of wireless frame and then add the other information obtained from the wireless frame)?

    2. I tried to monitor my wireless environment at home using wireshark. and it seems that the structure of the wireless frame that I got is the same as the ethernet frame. Does anyone knows why? As far as I know wireshark use PCAP library for packet capturing. So, my current conclusion is that PCAP can only get the information passed from layer 2 to layer 3, which is the ethernet frame format. Am I right? does anyone know how to get the full frame of the wireless? (I actually did some coding in PCAP and I verified with wireshark that the structure that I got from monitoring wireless traffic with PCAP is the same as the ethernet frame)

    I'm really confused right now :?. So, I would really appreciate the help.

    Thanks!

  • http://www.cwnp.com/cwna/look_inside.pdf

    Goto PG 168 . You'll find the answer to the first part of your question.

    Would have elaborated. But I'm in a hurry

  • Thanks vivek2727!
    That's cleared out a lot of doubt in head.

    BTW, I like what you just did.
    Giving me a reliable reference to read, think, and verify.

    Thanks again.

    You have made my day!

  • You are most welcome.

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