Dave Wi-Fi

Security is of the upmost importance when it comes to network and even more so when we are talking about Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi, as part of it's base fundamental is wireless and even with configuration options does go outside of your preferred area. This can cause a bit of an issue whereby someone can sit outside, with an adapter and monitor and potentially attack your wireless network. In this post, we will go over a high level description of the main security protocols out and about in the wireless world.  Thankfully keeping a handle of which ones are out there is quite simple. The Wi-Fi Alliance, setup in 1999 (by numerous companies to promote compatibility) owns the Wi-Fi trademark and subsequently develops the security protocols, which we'll discuss below.  There is four main Wi-Fi security protocols that you might see out and about and those are as follows, WEP, WPA, WPA2 and finally WPA3. Each have their pros and cons which we will also discuss on top of best practice configura...

802.11 Management Frames are used primarily as the name might suggest, to manage the wireless medium. The type of value regardless of which management subtype you see (covering this shortly) will always be shown as Type 00 as highlighted in the image below. This helps identify to the wireless device that the packet is a management frame; the same function happens for the control "01" and data frames "10".  Management frames come in different shapes and sizes but some of the most important are as follows: Beacon: Beacon frames are transmitted by the Access Point to announce the existence of a Basic Service Set. This will contain information about the BSS such as the SSID, supported data rates, country and (due to most APs being 11n and 11ac capable) 11n and 11ac capabilities and information. It's worth noting beacons are transmitted at set intervals, this can be configured to either increase or decrease the time frame in between ...