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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 004.68
EAN num: 9780596100520
Format: Illustrated
ISBN number: 0596100523
Label: O'Reilly Media, Ltd.
Manufacturer: O'Reilly Media, Ltd.
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 654
Printing Date: April 25, 2005
Publishing house: O'Reilly Media, Ltd.
Sale Popularity Level: 51937
Studio: O'Reilly Media, Ltd.
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
As we all know by now, wireless networks offer many advantages over fixed (or wired) networks. Foremost on that list is mobility, since going wireless frees you from the tether of an Ethernet cable at a desk. But that's just the tip of the cable-free iceberg. Wireless networks are also more flexible, faster and easier for you to use, and more affordable to deploy and maintain.
The de facto standard for wireless networking is the 802.11 protocol, which includes Wi-Fi (the wireless standard known as 802.11b) and its faster cousin, 802.11g. With easy-to-install 802.11 network hardware available everywhere you turn, the choice seems simple, and many people dive into wireless computing with less thought and planning than they'd give to a wired network. But it's wise to be familiar with both the capabilities and risks associated with the 802.11 protocols. And '802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide,' 2nd Edition is the perfect place to start.
This updated edition covers everything you'll ever need to know about wireless technology. Designed with the system administrator or serious home user in mind, it's a no-nonsense guide for setting up 802.11 on Windows and Linux. Among the wide range of topics covered are discussions on:
deployment considerations
network monitoring and performance tuning
wireless security issues
how to use and select acess points
network monitoring essentials
wireless card configuration
security issues unique to wireless networks
With wireless technology, the advantages to its users are indeed plentiful. Companies no longer have to deal with the hassle and expense of wiring buildings, and households with several computers canavoid fights over who's online. And now, with '802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide,' 2nd Edition, you can integrate wireless technology into your current infrastructure with the utmost confidence.
Amazon.com Review:
Among network designers and administrators, wired Ethernet is a known quantity. Plenty is known about how to build good twisted-pair network infrastructures, how to keep them secure, and how to monitor their excess capacity. Not so for the wireless Ethernet networks (built around the IEEE 802.11x standards)--these hold much more mystery for even experienced network designers. 802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide aims to codify the body of knowledge needed to design and maintain wireless local area networks (LANs). The authors succeed admirably in this, covering what installation and administration teams need to know and digging into information of use to driver writers and others working at lower levels.
The only significant detail that's been excluded has to do with security--a notorious weak point of 802.11x LANs. The authors cover the feeble but widely used Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) authentication protocol in detail and devote another whole chapter to 802.1x, which is an emerging authentication scheme based on Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP). The author has considerable skill in communicating information graphically and does a great job of using graphs to show how communications frequencies shift over time and how conversations among acess points and network nodes progress over time. This is indeed an authoritative document. --David Wall
Topics covered: How IEEE 802.11a and 802.11b wireless networks (also known as WiFi networks) work, and how to configure your own. The framing specification is covered well, as are authentication protocols and (in detail) the physical phenomena that affect IEEE 802.11x radio transmissions. There's advice on how to design a wireless network topology, and how to go about network traffic analysis and performance improvement.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers -
This book serves as a good, practical, "how-to" guide. The very first 9 chapters are a
"TCP/IP Illustrated"-style detailed look at the low-level details of 802.11, covering the format of every packet involved, when each packet is used, what each format means and how configuration parameters on both the sending and the receiving side will affect the individual packets. This is by far the most detailed, and most useful, section of the book.
Chapters 10-13, which endeavor to address the theoretical side of wireless networks (and 802.11 in particular), rush through the subject far too quickly to be of any practical value - if you have a very strong grounding in electromagnetic wave theory, you might get something from this section, but if that's the case, there's probably nothing here you don't already know. The author clearly knows what he's talking about, but he tried to cram an entire book worth of material into about 100 pages. (In his defense, he acknowledges this toward the start of the section).
The remainder of the book talks about specifics of installations and looks at Windows, Mac and Linux and examines various different hardware specifications for each. This part was interesting, but hopelessly out of date (I can't imagine how anybody could write about this topic and not be out of date before the ink dried on the print).
Missing was any coverage of WPA and WPA2. Chapter 6 talks a bit about EAP and LEAP;
I suspect that WPA & WPA2 were still undergoing standardization as this book was being written. Still, the content of the book gave me enough understanding of the building blocks of 802.11 networks to make sense of the IEEE documentation on WPA.
Rated by buyers 
-
This book is based on the hack series from O'Reilly so the book is broken into categorical chapters, each of which cover a wireless networking topic.
There are 7 broad chapters each which average about 12 hacks. The hacks vary greatly from composition and varying according to platform (Windows, Mac, Linux), difficulty, and expertise required. All hacks are covered well with diagrams, examples, explanations, and links for further reading.
One of the best items about the hacks is that they can be done at home to improve modest networks. In fact, most are designed to show a home or SOHO network owner "how to" improve networks of modest means. The chapter on homemade antennas is particuarly interesting. I was inspired to build my own out of duct work sheet metal, masking tape, and a coat hanger after reading "Pringles Can Waveguide" hack. The antenna actually worked which was the best part.
There are 100 hacks covered so everyone will find something of interest. For the most part, each hack is a separate chapter in itself so it is not neccesary to flip back and forth to find information. In general, they are written in instructional prose and are meant to teach you how to accomplish each hack.
Other chapters of interest cover wireless network security (many of which could just be labeled basic network security - wired or wireless), network discovery, and hardware hacks.
There are also 2 appendices covering wireless standards (the 802.1x's) and various hardware components that can be used for do-it-yourselfers.
This book is a very good value for network admins, hobbiests, and those looking to improve home or SOHO wireless networks.
Rated by buyers -
This is a great book to get started with 802.11 wireless networks. It gives a great overview and a decent amount of detail. For more detail I used open source available on the web, Linux drivers, and a book on 802.11i for more in depth knowledge on security.
Rated by buyers -
This book is a very detailed and mostly thorough description of 802.11 wireless networking. The author clearly describes the protocols and how they are typically used, plus various wireless network topologies, and even information about deployment such as antenna types.
Where the book falls short is that it was clearly written before the growth in popularity of "wireless controllers" or "wireless switches", and the auther says almost nothing about them or how wireless networking works when using a wireless-controller-based network.
There also was not much information about wireless network management, although that might be beyond the scope of this book.
Rated by buyers -
I've been looking for a book that discusses 802.11 technical details but that is easier to follow than the standards themselves. I've been very happy with this book, as it has helped me find the answers I was looking for. The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars is that I wish it had a few more sections that walked through sequences of actions (such as association and re-association). The information is there, but is sometimes scattered, so you have to pull together from different parts of the book and mentally reassemble. Othewise, it's very well written and I recommend it to anyone who needs a good working reference book for 802.11 operations.
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