The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) is a group that produced standards in many fields and industries.
The mission statement;
IEEE’s core purpose is to foster technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity.
The vision statement;
IEEE will be essential to the global technical community and to technical professionals everywhere, and be universally recognized for the contributions of technology and of technical professionals in improving global conditions.
The IEEE is engaged in an enterprise-wide strategic planning process. A summary of the long-range strategic plan, termed the IEEE Envisioned Future, details the main elements of the plan.
One of these IEEE committees is the 802, these deal with LAN and MAN (the reason for mention in my blog). A number of working groups exist under 802, some of which I am sure you will recognise and other not so much (table below). The reason I bring this body up is to understand how a technology/feature works it is of great benefit to read the standard that its based on (be that IEEE or RFC’s), and of course half the battle is to locate the standards. Once you truly understand the subject you can better understand reasons for vendors interpretation and implementation (including’enhancements’).
| name | description | note |
|---|---|---|
| IEEE 802.1 | Bridging (networking) and Network Management | |
| IEEE 802.2 | Logical link control | inactive |
| IEEE 802.3 | Ethernet | |
| IEEE 802.4 | Token bus | disbanded |
| IEEE 802.5 | Defines the MAC layer for a Token Ring | inactive |
| IEEE 802.6 | Metropolitan Area Networks | disbanded |
| IEEE 802.7 | Broadband LAN using Coaxial Cable | disbanded |
| IEEE 802.8 | Fiber Optic TAG | disbanded |
| IEEE 802.9 | Integrated Services LAN | disbanded |
| IEEE 802.10 | Interoperable LAN Security | disbanded |
| IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n | Wireless LAN (WLAN) & Mesh (Wi-Fi certification) | |
| IEEE 802.12 | demand priority | disbanded |
| IEEE 802.13 | Used for 100BASE-X Ethernet | |
| IEEE 802.14 | Cable modems | disbanded |
| IEEE 802.15 | Wireless PAN | |
| IEEE 802.15.1 | Bluetooth certification | |
| IEEE 802.15.2 | IEEE 802.15 and IEEE 802.11 coexistence | |
| IEEE 802.15.3 | High-Rate WPAN certification | |
| IEEE 802.15.4 | Low-rate WPAN certification | |
| IEEE 802.15.5 | Mesh networking for WPAN | |
| IEEE 802.16 | Broadband Wireless Access (WiMAX certification) | |
| IEEE 802.16.1 | Local Multipoint Distribution Service | |
| IEEE 802.17 | Resilient packet ring | |
| IEEE 802.18 | Radio Regulatory TAG | |
| IEEE 802.19 | Coexistence TAG | |
| IEEE 802.20 | Mobile Broadband Wireless Access | |
| IEEE 802.21 | Media Independent Handoff | |
| IEEE 802.22 | Wireless Regional Area Network | |
| IEEE 802.23 | Emergency Services Working Group | New (March, 2010) |