Tim: >> All your wireless devices transmit on the same channel. g: > yes and no. depends on manual assignment. Well, generally speaking, your access point only works on one channel, and all the clients use the same one. If you have two access points on the same channel, such as across a large site, your clients use the one with the strongest signal, with the clients being on the same channel two. But it's less problematic to have your access points on different channels (less likely to have spots where reception won't work), and the clients will change channels to suit the access point they're using. Generally speaking, an access point doesn't change the channel that it's using, after its setup. Going from what I understand of Bob's setup, he's got one access point and several clients. Those clients may have inbuilt wireless, or they may connect to a dongle/box to provide wireless networking. In that case, they would all be on the same channel. Even if he connected a separate DHCP server, it would be yet another client, rather than act as an access point (providing networking service to other clients). >> With wired networking, through a switch or router, many devices can all >> talk simultaneously, if they're each talking to different devices. > again, yes and no. with a switch, yes. > > with a router, no. again, first to transmit/first heard. Only if you're talking about /through/ the gateway, or different clients wanting to talk with the same device. Half a dozen clients all talking to each other, or anything else within the LAN, can do so simultaneously. i.e. Pairs of chatting devices that aren't talking to something else that's busy. > for wireless, what is needed, if not already, is ability for each interface > to monitor in a delayed channel switch scan mode. > > when a signal is received, interface would listen for it's ip. if being > 'called', it then replies and communications are established. > > if interface needs to communicate, it would first scan for an open channel, > then send destination ip address and listen for reply. Generally, when there's more than one access point available to you, whether they're part of the same LAN or not, your client will do one of a few things: Connect to one, and ignore all the others, until /you/ quit. Use the same one as last time. Use the one with best reception that it's authorised to use. Switch between access points if reception drops off the current one. Use the one the user manually selected. What isn't going to happen, with the usual way things run, is: To connect and disconnect while idle. Once it's connected to one, it keeps using the same one for the whole session, unless a problem crops up. NB: I'm not talking about continuous RF transmission, I'm talking about continuous association with the same access point. To switch access points if the one that you're currently set up to use is too busy. -- [tim@localhost ~]$ uname -r 2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686 Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I read messages from the public lists. -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
