A capture shows a client data frame and no acknowledgement after it. The client retries the data. What is the missing acknowledgement?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
The data went out and nobody confirmed it, so the client tried again. That missing confirmation is an acknowledgement, a control frame. Your beacon is not the receipt for a data frame.
Full Explanation
An 802.11 acknowledgement is a control frame. The receiver sends it to confirm a data frame arrived. When the capture shows data and no acknowledgement, the client retries, which is the behavior in the question. The missing piece is that control frame, not a management or upper-layer message. A beacon is a management frame that advertises the BSS on a timer. Clients do not wait for a beacon as the receipt for each data frame. An EAP success ends an authentication. It does not acknowledge ordinary data, and an open WLAN may have no EAP at all. A DHCP offer is an IP configuration message carried inside data frames. It is not the 802.11 acknowledgement, and a missing offer would be a different capture than a missing ACK after a data frame. Exam caveat: a missing ACK means the frame was not confirmed, which can be distance, interference, or a hidden node. It does not by itself name which of those it was. Operational check: look at the retry flag on the retransmitted data and the RSSI of that client before you change authentication.