Frame-bursting

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Frame-bursting is a technique in wireless technology supported by the draft 802.11e Quality of Service specification. Frame Bursting may increase the throughput of any (point-to-point) 802.11A, B, G or N link connection in certain conditions. This is done by reducing the overhead associated with the wireless session from either:

• Access Point to Client and vice versa
• Client to Client in ad-hoc mode.

This can result in the ability to support higher data throughput in mixed and uniform networks.

It enhances the ability of a wireless client to upload data at faster speeds by using the inter-frame wait intervals to "burst" a sequence of up to three packets before waiting the required period. This allows more data to be sent and less waiting to occur, however, can result in unfair allocation of airtime where there are a mix of clients of which only some support Frame-Bursting as the inter-frame wait periods are contention periods where other stations with data to send can seize the air and send their data.