Before I started doing stuff in wireless, I thought that 'essid' was a
real term. After all, type in 'man iwconfig' and you'll see it there.
But it's not a legit 802.11 term. There are only a few real acronyms in
the 802.11 standards, BSS, ESS, and DS being among them.
basic service set (BSS):
"A set of stations controlled by a single coordination function."
extended service set (ESS):
"A set of one or more interconnected basic service sets (BSSs) and
integrated local area networks (LANs) that appears as a single BSS to
the logical link control layer at any station associated with one of
those BSSs."
distribution system (DS):
"A system used to interconnect a set of basic service sets (BSSs) and
integrated local area networks (LANs) to create an extended service set
(ESS)."
ESS is a term. SSID is a term. But ESSID is NOT a real term. An ESS
that has an ID is an SSID. Period.
(Anyway, just a pet peeve of mine I'm seeing more and more in 802.11
literature)
