TABLE OF CONTENTS The most important part of a WLAN implementation is deployment planning. A poorly planned deployment is much worse than no deployment at all. If appropriate planning is not done, your wireless LAN deployment can be a complete failure due to its inability to function or its inability to properly serve your users needs.
This section covers the most important aspect of planning for your RF deployment, starting with the coverage of your WLAN and how to plan coverage appropriately. It then discusses the WLAN data rates with the different 802.11x standard and the variances caused in throughput due to client density. Various antenna options are also covered along with how to choose an antenna based on your needs.
Site surveys are critical to both the initial planning stages of your RF deployment and the ongoing maintenance of the WLAN. These are covered in detail and a sample site survey form is provided to get you started. Finally, interference detection and how this step of planning can help you to successfully deploy your WLAN is covered.
Each access point and antenna combination produces a single area of coverage. Each of these single areas is referred to as a cell. Multiple overlapping cells are used to provide wireless coverage for areas larger than a single cell alone can produce. This is cellular architecture.
DSSS wireless LANs have 11 total channels that can be used for RF transmission. Each channel is 22 MHz wide,...
