Thursday, February 2, 2012 - 10:17
Wireless networks are a useful complement to a wired network, allowing network connections to be obtained anywhere within an area rather than only at fixed network connection points. However, wireless networks suffer from a number of problems that do not affect wired networks, in particular that the medium they use to transmit packets is a scarce resource subject to physical limits. Whereas the capacity of a wired network can be increased indefinitely by adding more cables, a wired network only has available a finite (and in some cases very small) number of frequencies.