What's the difference between a wifi access point and station?

Question

I noticed that my (rooted) modem has some hidden modes for wifi. It has the default(and only setting without rooting) wireless access point, but it also has the settings repeater, ad-hoc, and station.

What I'm really curious about is this station mode and how it differs from access point. I did a cursory search and didn't come up with any significant differences, other than that they are two distinct modes on many wireless chipsets.

What is this station mode and how does it differ from access point?

Solution

Any device capable of behaving like a wireless client can be called a station. Connecting to other AP's, Routers etc. You don't really hear the term being thrown around a lot. in your case its referring to the devices ability to bridge a wireless network by acting like a standard client.

While a repeater just extends the signal, a bridge extends the logical network segment regardless of physical topology and if its smart, reduces congestion by building tables and routing data across the bridge only when necessary.

Comments

[Jason]

There's this crazy place where people write articles to describe almost anything.

[Spencer5051]

Jason, I think this is the link you meant to post.. lmgtfy.com/?q=wireless+station&l=1 Enjoy!