WiMax Network Contention                                  

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• The MAC is significantly different from that of Wi-Fi

• Wi-Fi MAC uses contention access: "all subscriber stations wishing to pass data through an access point are competing for the AP's attention on a random basis. This can cause distant nodes from the AP to be repeatedly interrupted by less sensitive, closer nodes, greatly reducing their throughput."

From Wikipedia

• 802.16 MAC is a "scheduling MAC where the subscriber station only has to compete once (for initial entry into the network). After that it is allocated a time slot by the base station. The time slot can enlarge and constrict, but it remains assigned to the subscriber station meaning that other subscribers are not supposed to use it but take their turn. This scheduling algorithm is stable under overload and oversubscription (unlike 802.11). It is also much more bandwidth efficient." This is how WiMax can accommodate the QoS requirements that ATM demands.

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