<networking> A term describing a computer network where
there is no physical connection (either copper cable or fibre
optics) between sender and receiver, but instead they are
connected by radio.
Applications for wireless networks include multi-party
teleconferencing, distributed work sessions, personal
digital assistants, and electronic newspapers. They include
the transmission of voice, video, images, and data, each
traffic type with possibly differing bandwidth and
quality-of-service requirements. The wireless network
components of a complete source-destination path requires
consideration of mobility, hand-off, and varying
transmission and bandwidth conditions. The wired/wireless
network combination provides a severe bandwidth mismatch, as
well as vastly different error conditions. The processing
capability of fixed vs. mobile terminals may be expected to
differ significantly. This then leads to such issues to be
addressed in this environment as admission control,
capacity assignment and hand-off control in the wireless
domain, flow and error control over the complete end-to-end
path, dynamic bandwidth control to accommodate bandwidth
mismatch and/or varying processing capability.
