what is Wi-Fi NAN

Question

Here is a new android system service called "WIFI_NAN_SERVICE".

I swear I googled "what is Wi-Fi NAN", but got nothing.

now, who can tell what is it/that? Thank you very much!

Answer 1

NAN stands for Neighborhood Area Network

A neighborhood area network (NAN) is an offshoot of Wi-Fi hotspots and wireless local area networks (WLAN), which enable users to connect to the Internet quickly and at very little expense.

techopedia

Answer 2

Dear NAN means Neighborhood Area Network and it is basically used for hot-spots route to WLAN.

You can connect with it very fast and have fun!

Answer 3

Just modifying my previous response (Instead adding new and not re-editing the previous one to keep the updates clearer here) With recent study on it's spec, https://www.wi-fi.org/downloads-registered-guest/NeighborAwarenessNetworking_TechnicalSpecification_v2.0.pdf/29731 , what I found interesting is section 5.4.5

Blockquote 5.4.5 NAN Connection Capability Attribute The NAN Connection Capability attribute contains a set of parameters that can be used for post NAN Discovery to establish a connection. Table describing the NAN Connection Capability Attribute Format

Capability Bitmap

So what I understand that Wi-Fi Futuristic would be NAN via which other Wi-Fi enhanced technologies would be used like P2P, TDLS, MESH which is just like UUID identifier for Bluetooth Profiles denoting which profiles are supported or not between two paired Bluetooth devices. Hence it provides more scalability to add more services to Wi-Fi just like Bluetooth and enrich the technology instead of just providing internet access.

Not only that the NAN protocol works on Fixed channel like 6 in 2.4 GHZ and 3 different channels options in 5 GHZ due to regulatory restriction, which is different from P2P especially which uses channels dynamically and hence unreliable . Hopefully NAN adds more reliability in connection setup as compared to P2P.

Thanx Atul Vaish