A- Wireless client

 Roaming is a client side decision in 802.11 WiFi. Client devices listen for beacon frames or send
probe requests to discover APs advertising the preferred SSID. The clients driver uses the
received signal strength of beacons or probe responses to make decisions on whether to change
APs or remain connected to the current AP. In terms of roaming, there are several points to
keep in mind:
o Wireless clients may not roam until received signal dips below a specified
proprietary threshold on the wireless NIC. In this instance, client 1 associated to
AP 1 will not roam to AP 2 despite AP 2's probe response reflecting a higher RSSI
value.
o Attenuation due to free space path loss in an open environment is typically easier
to predict. However, indoors RF scattering and reflection can create sources of
multipath interference. While physical proximity between client and AP has a
large impact on RSSI, it is not the only factor.
o If a client device is having trouble roaming (e.g., hanging on to an AP too long), it
may be desirable to toggle the device's roaming aggressiveness to a higher
setting. The screen shot below shows where this parameter can be set on a
Windows 7 laptop.
3 frame types

1. Management
2. Control and
3. Data

1. Management Frames – this frames manage stations (clients) joining and leaving wireless networks.

 Generally, there are 4 types of management frames:

1. Beacons
2. Probes
3. Authentication
4. Association
 Most common types of management frame is a “Beacon”. It is continual announcement of an
Access point(AP) existence, so this frame is generated from the APs. Every APs continually
“Beacons” to let their network to other devices(clients) nearby know that it is there.
 Example of “beacon” frames being advertised by the APs to my PC , so that if I have credential I
can access and get internet service.

Like” I am “ethiotelecom” network, I support this data rate, I support this types of encryption”,
this message will be over and over sent to your PC always until the AP is down or not accessible

 The next type of Management frame is a “Probe” frame. It is the opposite of a “beacon”. This
message is generated from the client device remembering the previously connected devices and
“probes” by asking ““ethiotelecom” are you there” to check if it is still available and if available
we can proceed to the next management Frame “authentication” and give our credential and
connect to it.

2. Control Frame – “Control” the RF(Radio Frequency) medium and aid in the delivery of other
frames.
o ACK
o Block-ACK
o RTS
o CTS

 ACK – WIFI has “half duplex” nature like a hub device. An “ACK” is to say, “yes I received this
frame”, so we send data then we send “ACK” to acknowledge that we received the data. This
takes long if we send “ACK” for every data received, so instead of this, there is an improvement
 made in 802.11n “Block-ACK” was introduced, which acknowledges a “block of data frames” all
at the same time (data, data, data, data…ACK, data, data, data…..ACK).
 RTS (Request To Send)—
 CTS (Clear To Send)- This is a signaling message transmitted by an IEEE 802.11 Station in
response to an RTS (Request to Send) message. The CTS message silences all wireless Stations in
its vicinity and enables the sender of the RTS message to begin data transfer.
 CTS and RTS are control frames which are used to prevent collision of packets in the wireless
networks.

3. Data Frames: - carry higher-level protocol data.

1. Data
2. QoS Data
3. Null Data