Diary 0609: The difference between WiFi and WiMAX

1. Wi-Fi runs on the Media Access Control's CSMA/CA protocol, which is connectionless and contention based, whereas WiMAX runs a connection-oriented MAC.
2. WiMAX and Wi-Fi have quite different quality of service (QoS) mechanisms:

• WiMAX uses a QoS mechanism based on connections between the base station and the user device. Each connection is based on specific scheduling algorithms.
• Wi-Fi uses contention access - all subscriber stations that wish to pass data through a wireless access point (AP) are competing for the AP's attention on a random interrupt basis. This can cause subscriber stations distant from the AP to be repeatedly interrupted by closer stations, greatly reducing their throughput.

3. Both 802.11 and 802.16 define Peer-to-Peer (P2P) and ad hoc networks, where an end user communicates to users or servers on another Local Area Network (LAN) using itsaccess point or base station. However, 802.11 supports also direct ad hoc or peer to peer networking between end user devices without an access point while 802.16 end user devices must be in range of the base station.