I was reading about a AP mode that some wireless chipsets support called PCF (Polling Coordination Function). It describes a mode that is a polling contention free mode that only some chipsets support (Atheros but not Prism). It sounds to me like a good physical layer solution for WISPs to eliminate hidden node and increase possible VOIP performance using Mikrotik. It also sounds like it would greatly improve interference against other 802.11b/g systems since it won’t wait to transmit.
Any idea if it can be supported in a future release (if it’s not already incorporated into NStreme)?
That’s a pretty old post. I’m going through a classic book on wireless “802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition” and I read about this function. I didn’t even know that such an option exists. Though the book is old, I don’t know what happened with the PCF eventually… It would be interesting if someone could share more details on this…
That is interesting. It is interesting that the AP could control the multi access of the different clients. It looks to me pretty much like the Token Ring’s token.
I could assume than that it’s not being implemented in MikroTik devices
