Review of 802.11 Wireless Networks Posted

Amazon.com just posted my five star review of 802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Ed by Matthew Gast. Wow, what an excellent book. From the review:

I tend not to read and review books on as broad a subject as "wireless networking." I've read and reviewed wireless security books like Real 802.11 Security and Wi-Foo, but 802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Ed (8WN2E) was a departure for me. Thankfully, 8WN2E is an incredible book. It exceeded my expectations and definitely earned its "Definitive Guide" status.

In addition to the book, I recommend Matthew's blog posts Top Ten 802.11 Myths of 2005 and When Is 54 Not Equal to 54? A Look at 802.11a, b, and g Throughput.

One of the marks of a great book is authoritatively answering a question I've pondered for a while. For example, I've heard that the introduction of 802.11b stations into an 802.11g network means all stations run at 802.11b speeds. This is absolutely false.

On p 303 he says:

Only the protection frames are required to be transmitted at the 802.11b-compatible data rates. Protection does not require 802.11g stations to use a slower data rate for the payload data, as is commonly asserted.

Brilliant. I even added tabs to this book -- I hardly ever do that.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Thanks for the recommendation, wishlisted.

FWIW I was pretty disappointed by the O'Reilly Ethernet book. From memory it had only a page or two on VLANs - now an essential part of the Ethernet landscape.
5:49 AM
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