3.3. Wireless Configuration

💡 First Principle: Wireless replaces cables with radio waves, trading physical infrastructure for electromagnetic complexity. Radio is a shared medium—all devices on a channel hear all transmissions—making channel planning, power management, and security configuration critical.

What breaks without wireless knowledge? Deploy all access points on channel 6, and they interfere with each other—performance craters. Skip WPA2-Enterprise for corporate deployment, and every device shares one password that you can never rotate without disrupting everyone. Ignore antenna patterns, and coverage has dead zones where signals don't reach.

Think of wireless channels like radio stations: if two stations broadcast on the same frequency in the same area, you hear static. Proper channel planning assigns different frequencies so stations don't overlap.