How Wireless Networks Work

Wireless networks work using radio waves rather than wires to broadcast data between PCs. That is the easy version.

If you are curious to understand what's occurring in more detail, then it's all explained in this piece. Ones and Zeros.

I am sure you know that PCs broadcast information digitally, using binary : ones and zeros. This is a strategy of communicating that interprets very well to radio waves, since the PC can broadcast ones and zeros as different sorts of beep. These beeps are so quick that they are outside a human's hearing range -- radio waves that you can not hear are, in truth, all around you all of the time. That doesn't stop a PC from using them, though . Morse Code. The way it works is a lot like Morse code. You most likely already know that Morse code is a technique of representing the alphabet so it can be broadcast over radio employing a dot ( short beep ) and a dash ( long dash ). It was employed by hand for a long time and became a good way of getting info from one place to another with the discovery of the telegram.

As importantly for this example, though , it's a binary system, just like a P.

C. 's ones and zeros. You could think about wireless networking, then, as being like Morse code for PCs. You plug a mixed radio receiver and transmitter in, and the PC is able to send out its equivalent of dots and dashes ( bits, in computer-speak ) to get your information from one place to another. All About Frequencies. You could wonder, though , the way in which the PC could possibly broadcast enough bits to send and receive info at the rate it does. Of course, there should be a restriction on how much can be despatched in a second before it just becomes worthless foolishness, right? Well, yes, but the key to wireless networking is that it becomes around this problem. Firstly, wireless transmissions are sent at extremely high frequencies, suggesting more info can be despatched per second.

Most wireless connections employ a frequency of 2.4 gigahertz ( 2.4 bn. cycles per second ) -- a corresponding frequency to mobile telephones and microwave ovens. As you could know, though , a frequency this high implies the wavelength must be really short, and is the reason why wireless networking only works over a limited area. Additionally, wireless networks employ a method known as 'frequency hopping'. They use many frequencies in the range they're given, and continually jump between them. This makes wireless networks more resistant to interference from other radio signals than they'd be if they only broadcast on one frequency. Access Points. The final step is when it comes to all of the PCs on a network sharing Net access. This is done employing a special piece of wireless apparatus called an access point. Access points are far more costly than wireless cards for one PC, as they contain radios that are capable of chatting to around 100 PCs at the same time, and sharing out access to the Net between them. Dedicated access points are only truly necessary for bigger networks, though -- if you only have some PCs, it is feasible to use one of them as the access point, or you might just get a wireless router. They know one another. That is all hunky dory, then, but how does wireless equipment manufactured by totally different companies manage to work together when this is all so complicated? Well, the answer's that there are standards that all wireless devices follow.

These standards are technically called the 802.11 standards, and are set by the IEEE ( Institute of Electric and Electronics Engineers ). It is thanks to folks sticking to their standards that wireless networking is so simple and inexpensive to use today. You do not want to fret. If all this talk about frequencies has you a little worried, you do not need to be -- wireless networking hardware and software handles all this automatically, without you needing to do a thing. Don't think that you are going to have to inform one wireless device what frequency another is using, because it simply isn't going to occur, alright? Wireless networking, for all its advanced workings, is truly much more easy to use than you'd ever expect.