Patent ID: 7414995

Claim:
A radio access point (RAP) system, comprising: an interconnect; a first unit coupled to a first end of the interconnect, the first unit being an electronic device without media access control (MAC) processing functionality that includes components to digitally sample a wireless, analog signal thereby producing digital data and to frame the digital data for transmission over the interconnect; and a switch physically separate from the first unit and coupled to a second end of the interconnect to establish communications with the first unit, the switch including a removable, radio access point (RAP) component to recover the digital data and process the digital data to recover media access control (MAC) frames containing data for transmission over a wired network, wherein the first unit and the RAP component collectively operating as an access point with the RAP component being responsible for MAC processing and the first unit being responsible for wireless signal processing, the RAP component being removable to allow for substitution of a second RAP component supporting MAC processing different than the MAC processing supported by the RAP component.