IEEE 802.11 Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

IEEE 802.11 - Research Paper Example Wireless uses radio waves in the transmission. Wireless LAN deals with two lower layers of the Open System Interconnection (OSI) which are the physical and data-link layers. I will briefly discuss three physical specifications of the physical layer: 802.11b: 802.11b was released in 1999 and uses DSSS that provide higher bit rate. The transmission of the data can reach 11 Mbps. It operates in 2.4 GHz range. 802.11a: 802.11a was released in 2001 and uses OFDM. The transmission of the data can reach 54 Mbps. It operates in 5 GHz range 802.11g: 802.11g uses OFDM. The transmission of the data can reach 22 Mbps. It operates in 2.4 GHz range. (21) IEEE 802.11 Security: 7 Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP): IEEE released Wired Equivalent Privacy protocol what is known as WEP for the security 802.11 standard in 1990 (15) .WEP was designed to make the communication through wireless safe and secured as much as it is in the wired local area network. WEP provides authentication and confidentiality to the security of the wireless network (21). WEP was developed on the base of RC4 stream cipher. In the encryption and decryption the same secret key must be used (1). The wireless device and the access point must have the same secret key (4). ... The process of WEP authentication is as shown in the figure: Retrieved from VoCAL (2012). The figure is taken from this website: http://www.vocal.com/secure-communication/wired-equivalent-privacy-wep/ 1. The authentication is sent from the wireless station to the access point. 2. The access point responds with challenge text sent to the wireless station. 3. The wireless station encrypts the challenge text and then sends it to the access point. 4. Finally, â€Å"If the access point can decrypt the authentication request and retrieve the original challenge text, then it responds with an authentication response that grants the client access† so the secret key in both sides should match each other. (11) The encryption of the data that are transferred between the wireless station and the access point in the WEP uses RC4 stream cipher. The process of WEP encryption is as shown in the figure: WEP uses CRC for the data integrity. WEP performs CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check) checksum ope ration on the plaintext and generates CRC value. This CRC value is concatenated to the plaintext. The secret key is concatenated to the Initialization Vector (IV) and fed into the RC4. Based on the secret key and IV, RC4 generates key stream. The key stream and plain text + CRC message is XOR'ed together. The result is the cipher text. The same Initialization Vector that was used before is pre pended in clear text to the resultant cipher text. The IV + Cipher text along with the frame headers are then transmitted over the air. (13). The shared key in WEP never changes again, and it is used for authentication and encryption which is the problem (13). WEP problems: The major problem in WEP in terms of security is that the wireless