Customer Reviews

802.11 Wireless Network Site Surveying and Installation

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802.11 Wireless Network Site Surveying and Installation
ISBN: 1587051648

802.11 Wireless Network Site Surveying and Installation guide by Bruce Alexander is an excellent guide to implementing wireless networking. It covers the foundations of wireless communication and how it can benefit an organization.

The book is broken down into the following five main sections:

1. UNDERSTANDING THE PREREQUISITES OF A SITE SURVEY

This deals with defining how wireless works. The section goes deep and explains the history of wifi and how it works. It talks about the different standards and when to use each one. This section also explains the different wireless devices, antennas, and discusses signal strength.

2. THE SITE SURVEY

This section primarily covers how do perform site surveys. It discusses about what needs to be done before one actually goes out to the site and what needs to be addressed once on site. This mainly covers identifying the requirements and selecting the location and hardware necessary to fulfill those requirements. A big part of this section describes the tools required to complete a wireless survey and how to analyze what comes out of the tools.

3. INSTALLING WLAN COMPONENTS

This section is not what a network engineer would expect to see with a name like this. This has nothing to do with integrating wireless into the existing infrastructure. This mainly deals with facilities and how to physically install wireless equipment such as access points. It covers how to mount equipment safely and in the right locations.

This book really dives into how wireless works on the physical level. It is a great addition to any library. If you are a network engineer looking for configuration examples and how to tie wireless into an existing infrastructure, this book is not going to help. Configuration examples and network diagrams would have been a great addition to this book. The author could of added another section to address these items. After going through the book again I realized that this is not what the author meant the book to cover. It is written to provide the necessary information for engineer to successfully get wireless networking built out at layer one.

I would highly recommend this book as an addition to an engineer reference library. I will give you the warning that it is not a book that one can easily sit down and read cover to cover unless you are really into frequency wavelengths.

This book assists in understanding the available systems, architectures, components, and tools of the trade in completing a design for an 802.11 WLAN. The book is aranged to match the chronological order of the final design, survey, and installation of a project. It begins with the prerequisites of a site survey, moves on to the survey and finally covers the installation process.

Of particular interest to me, because of the project I'm working on was Chapter 14 on Outdoor Bridge Deployments. Handling a small WLAN, such as across the room in a Starbucks or McDonalds is one thing. When you are going between buildings with distance, mountains and trees and periodically rain or snow in the way it is a different situation.

I consider this to be a beginning level book. It covers the basic considerations and details that I needed to know as I worked on my first WLAN. After this book come more specialized books on things like securing the network.

This book is a very good reference. A complete walkthrough of reqs gathering, the site survey process and design considerations. Some some cheap shots at competitors and too much Cisco product promotion, but that is common in a Cisco Press book; It is just as much about promoting Cisco solutions as it is about technology education. Recommended.

I was very interested in this book and proceeded to download the Kindle preview. The preview is of no use unless you are only interested in viewing the TOC and Introduction, About the Author, Acknowledgements, Icons Used in This Book, Introduction, How This Book is Organized, and seven pages of The Evolution of Wireless Standards.

My local book stores do not carry this items so it will go un-purchased which is a shame; it looks like a good reference to have.