How Does a Wireless Bridge Work?
Other People Are Reading
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Wireless Bridges
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A wireless bridge is a radio based device that allows two networks to communicate with each other, often from remote locations. As an example, a business that has offices in two buildings in an industrial park might wish to have their office computers connected as one integrated network. The choice would then come down to whether digging up the parking lot to install fiber, or using two radios to connect the different locations would be the better option. Certainly, if speed is the only criteria for making this decision, the wireless option can be installed in a matter of hours, whereas a fiber deployment will take weeks, if not months.
Technology
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Wireless bridges can be separated into two major categories, licensed (which requires a license granted by the FCC) and license exempt (or unlicensed) equipment which can be bought and installed by anyone without specific approval of the FCC. As one might expect, each option has its good and bad aspects.
Once a decision has been reached with respect to the use of licensed vs unlicensed equipment, the interface these devices will employ needs to be evaluated. Perhaps the most commonly accepted interface utilized by most network administrators is Ethernet, but there are others.
For the most part, licensed equipment will be proprietary and require a matched pair of radios made by the same manufacturer. This has its advantages, including inherent security built in, but also presents the issue of having what is known as "Hot Spares" in inventory so that should a piece of equipment fail, it can be quickly replaced. Conversely, many of the license exempt radios available on the market are based on the WiFi standard and are interoperable across a wide variety of manufacturer's product lines. -
The Mechanics
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As a simplistic translation, the method that these radios use to transmit data is based on taking a packet (a packet is a "chunk" of information passed along an Ethernet network) and convert to a radio "pulse" for transmission. When that particular packet is received on the other end, an acknowledgment is sent back to the transmitting radio, letting it know that the packet was received and that it is okay to transmit another packet. From there, the receiving radio takes that radio pulse and translates it back to a wired Ethernet packet to be sent to the proper recipient.
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