WESM zl Management and Configuration Guide WT.01.28 and greater

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Introduction
Radio Ports
802.11 Overview
802.11 is the IEEE standard for wireless networks. It specifies Physical Layer
standards such as radio channel frequencies and the modulation techniques used to
encode data. At the Data Link Layer, the standard also specifies the format for 802.11
frames.
At its most fundamental level, an 802.11 network can be defined as a set of devices
that communicates over the same medium. The area in which the devices can detect
each other’s signals is sometimes called a wireless cell.
More broadly, an 802.11 network, or WLAN, is a set of devices (typically, stations
and RPs) that share a network name.
For the purposes of understanding how to configure your Wireless Edge Services zl
Module, some important 802.11 concepts are:
■ Physical Layer standards
■ 802.11 frames
■ Basic service set (BSS)
■ Basic service set identifier (BSSID)
■ Extended service set (ESS)
■ Service set identifier (SSID)
Physical Layer Standards
The ProCurve Wireless Edge Services zl Module and ProCurve RPs support these
Physical Layer standards:
■ 802.11a
■ 802.11b
■ 802.11g
■ 802.11h
■ 802.11a
802.11a. 802.11a defines the Physical Layer for wireless networks in the 5.0 GHz
range. Each wireless cell operates on a certain subfrequency, or channel, within this
range. None of these channels overlap—that is, interfere with each other. The exact
channels differ from region to region; setting the country code on Wireless Edge
Services zl Module allows the module OS to present you with the correct options
when you configure radio settings.