What Is a Wireless Distribution System?

The wireless distribution system (Wireless Distribution System, abbreviated as WDS) refers to a system that allows access points in a wireless local area network to access each other wirelessly. It allows multiple access points to expand a wireless network without the need for a traditional wired backbone connection.

Compared with other solutions, the notable advantage of WDS is that it can still be saved in the transmission of each access point.

Since the IEEE 802.11-1999 standard does not define wireless

The wireless decentralized system can provide two wireless access point-to-access point (AP-to-AP) connection modes:

• Wireless Bridge mode: In this mode, the access points of the wireless decentralized system only communicate with the access points and do not allow wireless clients (STAs) to access them. (No connection accepted)

• Wireless Repeater mode: In this mode, the access points of wireless decentralized systems can communicate with each other and with wireless clients. (Acceptable connection)

Wireless decentralized systems have two disadvantages:

• The maximum wireless effective transmission volume may be halved after the first hop. For example, there are two wireless access points (AP_A & AP_B) linked via a wireless distributed system, one desktop (PC_1) is connected to AP_A via a wired network, and the other laptop (NB) is connected via wireless The network is connected to AP_B, and the transmission volume of communication between PC_1 and NB will be halved. This is because AP_B must re-transmit the message on both sides (AP_A & NB use wireless transmission). However, in another case, if another desktop (PC_2) is connected to AP_B via a wired network, since AP_B does not need to forward the message again, the communication transmission between PC_1 and PC_2 will not be halved. Dual-band wireless accessors may be able to avoid this problem by connecting clients on one channel and linking wireless decentralized systems with another channel.

• Wireless distributed systems do not support dynamic allocation and round-robin keys. This means that technologies like WPA and other dynamic key distribution methods will not work in most cases, but WPA may use the pre-shared key mode (PSK) method for encryption. This is due to the lack of standardization of this packet format, which may be resolved in future 802.11s standards. The current result is that only WEP or WPA-PSK can be used in wireless distributed systems, which also includes clients connected to relay base stations ^[2] .