Sorry about my english, but from my understanding a WAP is just to provide wifi to computers and devices. But why people say it’s to connect to a wire network? this is something I don’t get
In: Technology
A WAP does provde Wi-Fi but it needs to connect to a wired network to get that internet signal in the frst place. Think of it like a bridge, it connects ur devices wirelessly to the wired internet. HOpe that clears things up.
The WiFi network uses radio waves to transmit packets of information from place to place. The wired network uses wires, of course. The wires have mostly digital signals on them, not radio wave signals. The WAP is a radio device that reads the digital packets and sends out the corresponding radio signals. It then listens for radio signals and turns them back into digital packets, which it sends into the wired network.
When you pay an ISP to provide you with Internet, they provide it to you with a wire (or optical fiber). This goes into a modem that they give you which operates as a router for your local network. That is typically a wired network, but there are many combo devices with a WAP inside the ISP’s modem box.
The data travels from the computer to the access point wirelessly. Then the access point is hardwired to the switch/router/modem. The modem is then hardwired to your ISPs cable they install from the street to your house. Then it travels over hardwired cables to Reddit’s routers/servers and back again. Basically everything is wired up except that tiny little last step between your laptop/phone and the access point.
First, good call specifying that you are talking about networking.
Second, pretty much all internet for residential use enters the home over a landline of some sort: twisted pair phone wires, coax cable, or fiber optic. From there it goes to some sort of modem or termination. Sometimes that modem has a wireless access point built in, sometimes it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, then you need a way to get the signals from the modem out to your devices – that means a wire to a computer, a wire to a router with a built in AP, or a wire to a router that connects through more wires to access points somewhere else. Those wires are almost always some sort of cat5 or cat6 cable, with RJ45 connectors, and the signals are transmitted using the Ethernet protocol.
think of your wired network like a road for cars (cars are data traveling through cables).
The WAP is like a ramp that lets wireless cars (wifi signals) get on and off that road.
To do this, the WAP has to be connected to the wired road first so it can guide the wireless cars to and from it.
So when people say a WAP connects to a wired network, they mean it’s like a ramp that connects the wireless traffic to the main road, allowing wifi devices to access the internet and other network stuff.
A WAP does provide wifi, but how does it access the internet? It does this through a wire. Without being connected to a wired network, maybe it could connect your PC and phone directly, but how would you access Netflix or Reddit? Over a wire.
I think now that ISP’s provide ‘Wifi’ people kind of don’t understand what it is anymore or what they’re actually paying for
Wifi is always just a wireless connection to the wired network you got from your ISP, its your phone/laptop connecting to the box your internet provider provides you and sits in your house and is wired into the internet, wifi just replaces having to run a cable from the box in your house to a laptop
back in the early days the ISP would give you a modem which bring the internet into your home and then you’d buy your own wifi router so you could connect wirelessly to that modem instead of having to plug a wire into the modem, now its just one box that is both a modem and wireless
you don’t necessarily need to use the ISP’s wifi box you can buy and use your own but in the end it needs to hook up to something else that has access to the internet
this is different from internet over cell phones which connect to the cell tower and get wireless internet that way, you don’t need anything else in your house, the cell signal itself connects to the internet through the cell tower
Very poor analogy but think of a WAP as an adapter that turns WiFi radio waves into Ethernet.
WAPs are wireless routers, not much different from what most people have in their home. Like you may have in your home with your modem connecting to your router, WAPS are usually connected to a networks server. By the way, all wireless connection is connected to a wired ‘modem’ in some way. One way WAPS may be different is they may contain multiple SSIDs (Wifi names)
As others have already pointed out: the proper terminology of network components (and their role in a network) is somewhat obfuscated since Internet has become so widely available for Everyman. In enterprise environments these components are almost always distinct pieces of hardware or applications.
In your typical home use you have a “router” device which actually contains 3-4 network components (simplified, often there’s also a firewall and so on)
– a modem to connect to the Internet (translates your ISP connection to local network)
– a router: manages the routing of your network traffic. What goes to the Internet? To which device should the streaming video go?
– a switch: connecting multiple local wired devices.
– a wireless Access point: provides connection to wireless devices and is a bridge between wired and wireless (for example your smartphone to the Internet but could also be your printer to your laptop)
A simple use case for distinct wireless Access points would be a hotel: provide WiFi to the guests and give them Internet Access. To get good coverage in the whole building you’d install multiple wireless Access points on different floors. These WAPs would then all be connected via Ethernet (rj45) to a switch. The switch would connect these WAPs which each other and also the router. The router connects to the modem which provides the Internet connection
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