The IEEE 802.11 Handbook: A Designer's Companion 1st Edition

This book is must have for wi-fi professionals. It describes the protocol in detail and is a good reference to have.

I received my copy of the IEEE 802.11 Handbook 2nd edition on April 1st, 2005. All experienced Wi-Fi professionals should have this book and those new to Wi-Fi should learn the basics elsewhere.

What follows is a comparison of the two editions.

The same two authors are credited with authoring both editions. Both have significant IEEE 802.11 standards committee histories and business involvements. The authors dedicated the 1st edition to their parents and the 2nd to their wives. Times change.

The 2nd has twice as many pages, and is twice as thick. It is an extra inch wide and tall but with a larger font that results in the same amount of information on each page. Thus the content looks to have doubled.

All the old chapters are carried forward with nominal changes. The 2nd has a very modest glossary and a decent index; the 1st had neither.

New chapters in the 2nd include 802.11i, 802.11e, 802.11h, 802.11d, 802.11F, 802.11j, 802.11g, and 802.11n, in that order but mingled with the old chapters. The entirely new chapters are 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 13, 14, and 15.

Virtually all the graphics of the 1st are carried forward in the 2nd and most became grainier. Most typos and awkward English in the 1st are corrected in the 2nd.

Someone formatting the 2nd went overboard globally replacing words and phrases with acronyms or abbreviations. For example all instances of "station" became "STA" regardless of context.

Most other changes are additional paragraphs or additional sentences added to existing paragraphs. Rarely is a sentence modified. Here are the 2nd edition pages that have changes in the chapters carried over from the 1st: 5, 14, 26, 27, 33-34, 40, 52-55, 57, 60-72, 74-86, 89, 92-93, 223, 225-226, 228, 239-240, 258-260, 267, 271, 273, 275-284, 289-290, 344-347. If you have a 1st edition you can match the paragraphs up with the 2nd edition and the new material will jump off the page.

The result is a mix of voices from 1999 and 2005. Understanding this makes it easier to forgive a leftover remark from 1999 that would be a glaring mistake if penned in 2005.

The Handbook is seldom technically wrong. The 1st edition introduced language not found in the IEEE 802.11 standard that can both help and hinder accurate understanding of the technology. None of this was improved on in the 2nd edition.

The 1st edition was my only 802.11 resource for several years. When I began reading the IEEE 802.11 document and its amendments I had to stop reading the Handbook in order to not confuse the two. Perhaps one day I can write about what I would wish to see changed in a third edition.

I found the 2nd edition new chapters to be very informative and alone worth the price of the book. So enjoy -- but be careful.

I hope this helps. /Criss Hyde

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Freelance Technical Editor for The CWNP Program

If you are an engineer with need to quickly understand the details of the 802.11 protocol, but do not want to plow through hundreds of pages of the IEEE specification, this book is for you. It is a good concise treatment of the details of the protocol. It is written for practicing telecommunications engineers. It is not 'wireless 101' and it is not for someone who wants to know how to set up a home or enterprise 802.11 network. It does not describe what unratified (as of this writing) 802.11e, 802.11 g, 802.11i specs are. It does cover the 802.11a and 802.11b phy layer descriptions.
Unfortunately, the lack of a detailed Table of Contents, lack of any index at all, a super sparce list of acronyms hurt the readability. This also makes its use as a quick reference not so quick. I also think that the figures are too simple and that better use of detailed figures would help the book considerably. However, the actual IEEE spec has very good figures. This book and the IEEE spec are side by side companions on my bookshelf and complement each other nicely.
I have found other books to date on the subject much too soft as far as technical detail on the protocol mechanisms. The authors participated in the design of 802.11 and know how to present the most salient features for embedded engineers. If you want a concise explanation of the 802.11 spec, and already have a fundamental understanding of how ethernet works, this is the book for you. So, I give it 4/5 stars on applicability of this content, but not for literary style and construct.
If you are more interested in what is a wireless LAN, what affects the signal propagation, how do you plan to put in an 802.11 LAN in your enterprise, and a little overview on the protocol, buy the James T. Geier book

I purchased this book because I needed to very quickly learn about 802.11 for my job. I found this text to be a good source of information and an excellent general reference to have in my library.

This is a book that is intended for engineers and technical experts or those that aspire to be. It is not a basic text for "IT types". Although, I don't believe there are any books on the market right now that do a better overall job than this one, this text is still somewhat lacking in giving a good overall picture of how an 802.11 system actually operates. The book does a great job in covering the low-level details of the standard, however, it would be greatly improved by more examples and diagrams that illustrate system operation.

In spite of its few shortcomings, I highly recommend this book for engineers who need to shore up their knowledge of 802.11 and its many variations.

This is a complete rip-off. A grossly overpriced mini pocket reference. That's all that it is...a reference for those who know the 802.11 standard and just want to carry something with them to remind them of one point or another.

If you are NOT already an expert on 802.11 then you won't learn anything from this book. Having read both this book and the 802.11 standard, I must say the standard is much more approachable.

I recommend Matthew Gast's "802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide, 2nd edition". It is about 5 times bigger and sells for about 1/3 the price of this worthless book. Gast's book contains way more explanation, and uses an easy to follow style.