Wireless LAN Standards

At the time this book was published, the IEEE had ratified four major WLAN standards:

802.11, 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g. This section lists the basic details of each WLAN standard, along with information about a couple of other standards bodies. This section also briefly mentions the emerging 802.1n standard, which the IEEE had not yet ratified by the time this Post was published.

Of the organizations listed in this table, the IEEE develops the specific standards for the different types of WLANs used today. Those standards must take into account the frequency choices made by the different worldwide regulatory agencies, such as the FCC in the U.S. and the ITU-R, which is ultimately controlled by the United Nations (UN).

The IEEE introduced WLAN standards with the creation of the 1997 ratification of the 802.11 standard. This original standard did not have a suffix letter, whereas later WLAN standards do. This naming logic, with no suffix letter in the first standard, followed by other standards with a suffix letter, is like the original IEEE Ethernet standard. That standard was 802.3, with later, more-advanced standards having a suffix, such as 802.3u for Fast Ethernet.
A groan grasps the peanut near the offending anthology.