IEEE 802

IEEE 802 is a family of IEEE standards dealing with local area networks and metropolitan area networks.The IEEE 802 standards are restricted to networks carrying variable-size packets, unlike cell relay networks, for example, where data is transmitted in short, uniformly sized units called cells. Isochronous networks, where data is transmitted as a steady stream of octets, or groups of octets, at regular time intervals, are also beyond the scope of the IEEE 802 standards.

• IEEE has a very wast scope and covers a very large area, 
• IEEE 802 is a family of IEEE standards dealing with local area networks and metropolitan area networks.
• The number “802” has no particular significance:it was simply the next available number IEEE could assign to the standards project, 
• "802" is sometimes associated with February 1980, the date of the first meeting.
• The IEEE 802 standards are restricted to networks carrying variable-size packets, unlike cell relay networks, for example, where data is transmitted in short, uniformly sized units called cells.
• where data is transmitted as a steady stream of octets, or groups of octets, at regular time intervals, are also beyond the scope of the IEEE 802 standards.

IEEE 802 basically map to the lower two layers (Data Link and Physical) of OSI networking reference model. In fact, IEEE 802 splits the OSI Data Link Layer into two sub-layers named logical link control (LLC) and media access control (MAC),

so the layers can be listed like this:

• Data link layer
• LLC sublayer
• MAC sublayer
• Physical layer

• The IEEE 802 family is maintained by the IEEE 802 LAN/MAN Standards Committee (LMSC). 
• The most widely used standards are for the Ethernet family, Token Ring, Wireless LAN (Wi-Fi), Bridging and Virtual Bridged LANs. 
• An individual working group provides the focus for each area. The groups are numbered from 802.1 to 802.12.

Some important work groups are as:

Name	Description	Status
IEEE 802.1	Higher Layer LAN Protocols Working Group	active
IEEE 802.11	Wireless LAN (WLAN) & Mesh (Wi-Fi certification)	active
IEEE 802.15	Wireless PAN	active
IEEE 802.15.4	Low-Rate wireless PAN (e.g., ZigBee, Wireless HART, MiWi, etc.)	active

Also See

References

Wikipedia and Internet