WLAN Industry with OSI Model

The WLAN Industry

Outside the wireless LAN (WLAN) infrastructure and client vendors, there are several important organizations that are important to be aware of:

• IEEE — One of the world’s leading developers of technology standards, including the 802.11 standard defining the physical and media access control (MAC) sublayers of the OSI model for WLAN.
• Wi-Fi Alliance — A nonprofit member organization that owns the Wi-Fi trademark. The Wi-Fi Alliance creates interoperability standards and certifies products that meet their standards. Certified products carry the Wi-Fi logo.
• IETF — An open standards organization that manages the RFC documents that comprise the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). Network protocols are defined in RFC documents, including RADIUS and Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP).
• CWNP — Certified Wireless Network Professional (CWNP) provides vendor-neutral WLAN certification. The Certified Wireless Network Administrator (CWNA) certification is recommended for any professional working in a technical role in the WLAN industry.

OSI Layer Model 

The Data Link Layer has two sublayers—logical link control (LLC) and MAC. The LLC sublayer interfaces with the network layer, and the MAC sublayer interfaces with the physical layer.

In TCP/IP networks, everything above the Data Link Layer is the same regardless of the physical transmission medium thanks to this LLC sublayer, but the Physical Layer and MAC sublayer must align with one another. For each physical transmission medium, there is an associated MAC sublayer to define the operational rules for transmitting data over that physical medium.