Understanding No Acknowledgment

The 802.11e standard also specifies an option referred to as “no acknowledgment”. When this option is used, the MAC does not send an ack when it has correctly received a frame. This means that reliability of "no ack" traffic is reduced, but it improves the overall MAC efficiency for time-sensitive traffic, such as VoIP, where the data has a certain, very strict, lifetime. The "no ack" option also introduces more stringent real-time constraints because if an ack is not expected, then the next frame for transmission has to be ready within a short interframe space (SIFS) period from the end of the last transmission. Also, note that block acks override the WMM “no ack” option. In other words, block acks will be sent when doing frame aggregation even if the “no ack” option is enabled.

Note: Configuring no acknowledgment has no effect if WMM is disabled.

Related Topics

• Understanding Wi-Fi Multimedia
• Junos OS CLI Reference. See the no-acknowledgement statement summary in the wlan Hierarchy and Statements.
• Junos OS J-Web Help. In the J-Web user interface, select Configure>Wireless LAN>Settings and click Help.