#Wifi packet structure mac#

#Wifi packet structure mac#

Wi-Fi MAC (physical) addresses have the same 48-bit size as EthernetвЂ™s and the same internal structure ( 2.1.3 Ethernet Address Internal Structure). Wi-Fi is designed to interoperate freely with Ethernet at the logical LAN layer. Putting radio-essential control and management protocols within the Wi-Fi layer means that the IP layer can continue to interact with the Wi-Fi LAN exactly as it did with Ethernet no changes are required. Control packets are used to compensate for some of the infelicities of the radio environment, such as the lack of collision detection. Unlike any wired LAN protocol we have considered so far, in addition to normal data packets Wi-Fi also uses control and management packets that exist entirely within the Wi-Fi LAN layer these are not initiated by or delivered to higher network layers. (Strictly speaking, these are all amendments to the original 802.11 standard, but they are also de facto standards in their own right.) Like classic Ethernet, Wi-Fi must deal with collisions unlike Ethernet, however, Wi-Fi is unable to detect collisions in progress, complicating the backoff and retransmission algorithms.

Wi-Fi is a trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance denoting any of several IEEE wireless-networking protocols in the 802.11 family, specifically 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n, 802.11ac and 802.11ax.