Wireless Networking

Intro

Wireless networking is used to wirelessly communicate devices to the internet. These are connected by using a WAP (Wireless Access Point) and a receiving device like a Wi-Fi card or chip. These can be added to a mobile device or a computer by using either a Wi-Fi dongle or a Wi-Fi PCIe Card.

Technologies

These are a few different types of network technologies. The most common and newest version is 802.11ac but there are different types including 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ac/ab

Distance

Distance affects the signal of the Wi-Fi, if the signal is indoors it can spread to a distance of 50-70m and outdoors it can spread to a distance of 250m. It is weaker indoors because of interference like doors, walls, pipework and microwaves.

SSID

Each network is set a SSID (Service Set Identification). This is the name that is associated with a network. When a device is trying to connect to a network, the device will search for a network . and that network will report back with its SSID. Some networks don't broadcast there SSID. This is so that people cant connect to the network so that the network is more secure.

MAC Address

A MAC (Media Access Control) address is a group of hexadecimal digits that contain information about that device that broadcasts data. the first three groups represents the chip or device that it is and the last three groups represent your actual device

Stations

A station has a radio frequency and a channel that it is broadcasted at. The old Wi-Fi frequency is 2.4Ghz which is what all Wi-Fi capable devices can use but there is a new frequency that is 5Ghz. The main benefit of this is that not many devices use this new technology so that means that there wont be as much interference hence better speeds. Also the frequency is broken up into approximately 12 channels that are used.

Network Security

There are many different ways that you can secure a network.

• Change the default SSID to your own
• Hide the SSID
• Create a whitelist to only allow certain devices to connect to the network
• Secure the network with a password

WPA/WPA2

WPA or Wi-Fi Protected Access is a protocol that secures a Wi-Fi network. It was developed by the Wi-Fi Alliance to secure wireless networks. WPA was rolled out in 2003 and then WPA2 was introduced in 2004 improving upon WPA.