A Review of De-Facto MAC Standard: IEEE 802.11 DCF

Advancement in the wireless networking technologies has drastically changed our world and has led us to new direction of "Infrastructure-less networking- Mobile Adhoc Networks". MANETs is a troupe of mobile nodes tied by wireless links in peer to peer fashion. Mobile nodes in MANETs often struggle for the wireless medium access. IEEE have defines certain rules for the medium access control (MAC). IEEE 802.11 DCF is a de-facto MAC standard. These rules have been laid down at MAC sub layer of link layer of TCP/IP reference model. One interesting research area in MANETs is MAC. This article provides a brief review of IEEE 802.11 DCF MAC standard.