wireless

networking A term describing a computer network where

there is no physical connection (either copper cable or fibreoptics) between sender and receiver, but instead they are

connected by radio.

Applications for wireless networks include multi-party

teleconferencing, distributed work sessions, personaldigital assistants, and electronic newspapers. They include

the transmission of voice, video, images, and data, each

traffic type with possibly differing bandwidth and

quality-of-service requirements. The wireless network

components of a complete source-destination path requires

consideration of mobility, hand-off, and varying

transmission and bandwidth conditions. The wired/wireless

network combination provides a severe bandwidth mismatch, as

well as vastly different error conditions. The processing

capability of fixed vs. mobile terminals may be expected to

differ significantly. This then leads to such issues to be

addressed in this environment as admission control,

capacity assignment and hand-off control in the wireless

domain, flow and error control over the complete end-to-end

path, dynamic bandwidth control to accommodate bandwidth

mismatch and/or varying processing capability.

Usenet newsgroup news:comp.std.wireless.

(1995-02-27)