Asus PCE-N15 User Manual - Page 30

PCE-N15 WLAN Card User Manual ICS ICS is used to share one computer's Internet connection with the rest of the computers on your network. When this computer is connected to the Internet, all the communications to and from the Internet on your network are sent through this computer which is called the host computer. The rest of the computers can send and receive e-mail messages and access the web as if it were connected directly to the Internet. IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The IEEE sets standards for networking, including Ethernet LANs. IEEE standards ensure interoperability between systems of the same type. IEEE 802.11 IEEE 802.xx is a set of specifications for LANs from the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). Most wired networks conform to 802.3, the specification for CSMA/CD based Ethernet networks or 802.5, the specification for token ring networks. 802.11 defines the standard for wireless LANs encompassing three incompatible (non-interoperable) technologies: Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS), Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS), and Infrared. 802.11 specifies a carrier sense media access control and physical layer specifications for 1 and 2 Mbps wireless LANs. IEEE 802.11a (54Mbits/sec) Compared with 802.11b: The 802.11b standard was designed to operate in the 2.4GHz ISM (Industrial, Scientific and Medical) band using direct-sequence spreadspectrum technology. The 802.11a standard, on the other hand, was designed to operate in the more recently allocated 5-GHz UNII (Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure) band. And unlike 802.11b, the 802.11a standard departs from the traditional spread-spectrum technology, instead using a frequency division multiplexing scheme that's intended to be friendlier to office environments. The 802.11a standard, which supports data rates of up to 54 Mbps, is the Fast Ethernet analog to 802.11b, which supports data rates of up to 11 Mbps. Like Ethernet and Fast Ethernet, 802.11b and 802.11a use an identical MAC (Media Access Control). However, while Fast Ethernet uses the same physical-layer encoding scheme as Ethernet (only faster), 802.11a uses an entirely different encoding scheme, called OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing). The 802.11b spectrum is plagued by saturation from wireless phones, microwave ovens and other emerging wireless technologies, such as Bluetooth. In contrast, 802.11a spectrum is relatively free of interference. ASUS WLAN Card 27