Chapter 5. Dissection of a Probe Response MMPDU

The main portion of Chapter 4 was concerned with a high-level depiction of the frame formats used by IEEE 802.11.

In this chapter, the structure is examined in microscopic detail by taking apart a Probe Response MMPDU from an actual packet trace, to see how the theoretical treatment of the main body of Chapter 4 matches up with what is actually sent on the wireless medium. This material is in its own section because the author does not believe that this information is likely to be equally useful to every reader. If a reader someday needs to analyze a frame from a network analyzer, he or she might find this material useful. Because it is not necessary for the understanding of the remainder of the book, and because it is excessively detailed to keep in the body of Chapter 4, the author chooses to place this information on its own, in this chapter. Readers who want to skip this section will probably not regret it.