802.11 analysis

In this section, we'll take a look at wireless connection issues and how they look in Wireshark.

The 802.11 standard has been around for quite some time. You can find more info at http://ieee802.org/11/Reports/802.11_Timelines.htm:

It originally started in 1997. You can see in the preceding screenshot that this was the year it was ratified. It actually began in 1991. Since then it has had many changes to it, including 802.11a, which some people may remember. We have 802.11b, 802.11g, and so on. As we go up in time, you can see how many different flavors of 802.11 there are out there. Now, not all of them have been used for normal home networks or office networks; some of these are specialty versions for long distance or low power such as WiMAX. You can see that all the ones that I've been going through have been superseded by a newer version, and these newer versions are at the top:

These are the ratified standards. You can see that even though 802.11a and b and g and n are...