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Rating: 
Summary: Coming up for air
Review: As a software engineer, I have worked in the telecom software industry for the last severals years and have been playing catch-up to the standards for every one of those years because of the number of standards and relationships between them. This book has finally put one of the most significant of these standards 802.11 in perspective within the family of telecom standards. Superb research, analysis and context make this book a great read and asset to telecom application software development.
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Summary: Good overview of the standards
Review: Great reference for keeping up with the dizzying amounts of data on standards out there. Jim does a nice job of grounding the subject for understaning purposes. Good place to "start" if this subject matter is unfamiliar to the reader.Pete
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Summary: Taking the mystery out of wireless.
Review: The newest technology for networking is wireless and the protocol that covers this is 802.11. In just over 280 pages I found a wealth of information that not only simplifies the concepts but also helped me understand how this new technology will enhance networking as we know it. What the authors do in this book, which I haven't seen in any others is breakdown the protocol first, explaining how the different levels of 802.11, BlueTooth and 3G work. This includes 802.11, 11A, 11B and 11G, each having a specific purpose and function. I found that not only is there different types of protocols but also hardware and carriers for wireless LANs as well, the book does a good job of distinguishing each from the other. The authors also cover the process of implementation and planning which makes this a fairly well rounded manual. One thing I like most about the book was the coverage of the applications you can use and what groups are already using the technology. While this book isn't written to any certification per say, this book will be a handy reference for the CWNA exam and beyond
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Summary: Complicated Topic Simplified
Review: The title is accurate. I liked this book because the author has taken a complicated and very technical topic and broken it down to the laymen's level, such as myself. I highly recommend this book.
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Summary: Too much fluff
Review: This book contains too much fluff. The title is somewhat misleading in my opinion. It has almost 300 pages but only about 150-170 of those pages actually deal with 802.11. Even of those pages, a considerable amount of space is devoted to covering the other 802.11 working groups leaving me disappointed in the 802.11b coverage. The rest of the book covers other wireless networking technologies (such as hiperlan, homeRF and countless others that most of us will never encounter). It also spends way too many pages on vague, 1-2 paragraph descriptions of how business x has implemented a 802.11 network to enhance productivity. And finally, the last 61 pages (aka appendix A), is a word-for-word reprint of the FCC regulations covering unlicensed emissions. These regulations apply to, but are not specific to, 802.11 and are surely available for free on the internet if you really have to have them. I'm still looking for a good WiFi book.
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Summary: Good context for decsion makers
Review: This book is good for people condsidering WLAN for their business or using WLAN technology in their products. Some tech details, but if you don't know what spread spectrum is, why its important to WLANs and why security is such a problem - topics such as that - then this book is for you. It's not a tech bits/bytes programming manual, but if you want that - you can download the spec from IEEE free. If you want a good view of where the technology fits with other wireless data technologies, why its so popular and what areas are problems, this book gets you going.
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Summary: Too simple without insight
Review: This book severs as an introductory book. If you are an engineer with backgound on ethernet, you can skip this. This book is supposed for non-technical people, like marketing. Go for 802.11 wireless network if you want to know more.
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