Introduction to 802.11 standard and wireless LAN

Before diving into the hands-on part, it is worth recalling the basic concepts of the 802.11 standard on which wireless local area networks are based.

The 802.11 is the second layer (link layer) standard for implementing wireless LAN developed by the IEEE. Devices and networks that use the 802.11 standard are commonly known as Wi-Fi, a trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance.

There have been subsequent specifications of the standard over the time, the main ones are 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, and 802.11n.

802.11a operates on the 5 GHz frequency range while 802.11b/g on the 2.4 GHz frequency range, which is by far the most used by Wi-Fi networks nowadays. 802.11n supports both these frequency bands and is backward compatible with the other 802.11 specifications.

The range of the Wi-Fi signal depends on the standard used, on the power of the transmitting device and on the presence of physical obstacles and radio interferences.

For common Wi-Fi devices...