IEEE Standards

IEEE 802 refers to a family of IEEE standards dealing with local area networks and metropolitan area networks.

More specifically, the IEEE 802 standards are restricted to networks carrying variable-size packets. By contrast, in cell relay networks 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 out of the scope of this standard. The number 802 was simply the next free number IEEE could assign, though “802” is sometimes associated with the date the first meeting was held — February 1980.

The services and protocols specified in IEEE 802 map to the lower two layers (Data Link and Physical) of the seven-layer 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 that the layers can be listed like this:

• Data link layer
• LLC Sublayer
• MAC Sublayer
• Physical layer

The IEEE 802 family of standards 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, Bridging and Virtual Bridged LANs. An individual Working Group provides the focus for each area.

IEEE developed a set of 802 network standards. They include:

• IEEE 802.1: Standards related to network management.
  
• IEEE 802.2: General standard for the data link layer in the OSI Reference Model. The IEEE divides this layer into two sub-layers -- the logical link control (LLC) layer and the media access control (MAC) layer. The MAC layer varies for different network types and is defined by standards IEEE 802.3 through IEEE 802.5.
  
• IEEE 802.3: Defines the MAC layer for bus networks that use CSMA/CD. This is the basis of the Ethernet standard.
  
• IEEE 802.4: Defines the MAC layer for bus networks that use a token-passing mechanism (token bus networks).
  
• IEEE 802.5: Defines the MAC layer for token-ring networks.
  
• IEEE 802.6: Standard for Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs).