Walnuts

ABC of Wi-Fi
By Dnyanada Arjunwadkar
Dnyanada Arjunwadkar
9/30/2014

Dnyanada Arjunwadkar


WI-FI
In this chapter we will study the technology that you must be familiar with. You must have
used it to do Check In when you went to watch a movie using Wi-Fi in the cinema halls or to
ping our friends during lectures using college Wi-Fi or you must have used your hostel Wi-Fi
connection to download the latest episode of Game of Thrones. You will find this technology
in all the latest gadgets. For instance the built in Wi-Fi connectivity in Mobile phones, tablets,
laptops, printers, digital cameras, external storage disks etc enables the user to connect to the
Local Area Network without plugging in any cables .this allows user to access the internet on the
go. So Let us find out about how this amazing technology works! What are its different types?
How secure is it?
Before we begin with Wi-Fi let us take a look at some important terms related to Network
Topology:
Access Points: They act as a bridge between wireless LAN and wired LAN.
The proximity of the device to the access point will determine the speed of web access.


Access Point Placement and Power

APs are to be mounted at height so that it can have better coverage.
Height may vary from 15 to 25 feet.
Various factors like cement walls, doors act as obstacle as different obstacles have
different propagation characteristics have to be considered while mounting the access
point.
Access points have antennas.

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Ad-hoc Network:

This type of network is built for Temporary use.
It is used for communication only within the ad-hoc network.
Communication between the two devices is not dependent on Access Point. Thus we refer
to Ad-hoc Networks as Independent Basic Service set.(IBSS)
These are self-organizing networks without any centralized control.




Example: Syncing the presentation among all the laptops in a meeting.
Infrastructure Model of Network:
This type of network has Access Point where multiple devices are connected.
This is referred as Client-Server model.
This topology is used to cover larger area supporting more number of devices to access
internet.

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Example: Wi-Fi network available in malls where multiple devices are connected to it.
Wi-Fi is a wireless Local Area Network technology which provides access to internet
using radio waves. Depending on the Wi-Fi standard the radio operate on 2.4 GHz or 5GHz
frequencies. Wi-Fi is wireless LAN which differs from wired LAN in Hardware setup,
performance, level of security and performance other than the providing mobility to user.

Wi-Fi is defined under the IEEE 802.11 standard. The frequencies that are used in
WLAN are in the unlicensed band. Such unlicensed bands can be used by anyone for radio
communication without the license as long as they do not radiate power. IEEE 802.11 defines
Media Access Control (MAC) and Physical (PHY) layers specifications for wireless LANs.
Three different Physical layer specifications were defined, namely, Frequency Hopping Spread
Spectrum (FHSS), Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) and Infrared (IR).

Structure of 802.11 is as follows
[4]
:



Preamble: synchronizes the receiver, tells when the packet starts.
It contains 96 bits.

PLCP : Physical Layer Convergence Procedure
This portion contains about 192 bits.
It gives information about how many bytes in data portion.
It tells the rate of data transmission.

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Data : It is the actual data transmitted by the source.
The amount of data bits can vary i.e. 200 bits to 18000 bits.
Contains source/destination addresses.
CRC : Cyclic Redundancy Check.
It is 32 bits long.
Used for error checking in the received sequence of bits.

Different Wi-Fi specifications are declared under this standard such as 802.11a, 802.11b,
802.11c, 802.11g, 802.11n etc. depending on the specification the attributes like data rate,
maximum coverage , frequency range , number of access points that can be supported differ.


1. 802.11a

It operates in unlicensed 5 GHz frequency band.
It uses Orthogonal Frequency Division Method (OFDM) to generate radio signals.
802.11a specification operates at radio frequencies between 5.15 and 5.825 GHz, i.e.
802.11a utilizes 300 MHz bandwidth




Devices operating on 5GHz face less interference as this is underused frequency band.
802.11a supports speeds up to 54 Mbps.
802.11 a transmitters support transmission rates of 6, 9, 12, 18, 24, 36, 48, or 54 Mbps.
The low and middle bands have a total of 200 MHz of frequency which supports 8 non
overlapping channels.
8 non overlapping channels allow 8 different Access Points i.e. 8 ad-hoc connections
simultaneously.
The reusable cluster size is 8.
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Disadvantage:
Short range.
The range of 802.11a is less compared to 802.11b and 802.11g.it becomes necessary to
mount more number of Access Points to cover larger area which increases the cost making
it the most expensive among all the standards.

Applications

802.11a provides high throughput hence it is used in Audio/Video conferencing.
Large file transfers.
Higher speeds enable faster Web Access.
The higher bands of 802.11a provide high power output thus it is used in wireless building
to building connections.


2.802.11b

It is operated in unlicensed 2.4 GHz frequency band.
This standard is used worldwide.
It uses Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) to generate radio signals.
Devices operating on 2.4 GHz face more interference as this is heavily used frequency
band. Thus devices operating in 802.11b may face disturbance from cordless phones,
microwaves oven, Bluetooth devices etc.
802.11a supports speeds up to 11 Mbps.
802.11b transmitters support transmission rates of 1 Mbps, 2 Mbps, 5.5 Mbps, 11Mbps.
802.11b supports 3 non overlapping channels.
3 non overlapping channels allow 3 different access points i.e. 3 ad-hoc connections
simultaneously.
The reusable cluster size is 3.


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Advantages:

It is low cost implementation of WLAN.
DSSS is more power-efficient compared to OFDM.
The range of 802.11b is twice as good as 802.11a.


Disadvantage:


Lower data rates
Interference faced in 2.4 GHz

3.802.11g

This is standards has combination of both 802.11a and 802.11b.
It operates in 2.4 GHz frequency band similar to 802.11b.
802.11g also uses OFDM similar to 802.11a but supports spread-spectrum capabilities,
802.11b equipment can connect to 802.11g Access Point but with speed up to 11Mbps.
Thus we can say that 802.11g offers throughput of 802.11a with backward compatibility of
802.11b.
It is also called as high-speed extension to 802.11b.
It supports High speed up to 54 Mbps.
802.11b transmitters support transmission rates from 6 Mbps to 54Mbps.
802.11g operates over 3 non-overlapping channels.

Advantages

Compatible with existing 802.11b standard
It is less expensive compared to 5 GHz alternatives
Enables easy migration for 802.11b devices.



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Other 802.11 standards:

802.11e: Introduces Quality of Service.
802.11f: Inter Access Point Protocol.
802.11i: Security.





CSMA
Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA) is a probabilistic media access control (MAC)
protocol in which a node verifies the absence of other traffic before transmitting on a shared
transmission.
That is, it tries to detect the presence of a carrier wave from another station before attempting to
transmit. If a carrier is sensed, the station waits for the transmission in progress to finish before
initiating its own transmission
[1]
.
CSMA with collision detection
CSMA/CD is used to improve CSMA performance by terminating transmission as soon as a
collision is detected, thus shortening the time required before a retry can be attempted
[1]
.
CSMA with collision avoidance
In CSMA/CA collision avoidance is used to improve the performance of CSMA by attempting to
be less "greedy" on the channel. If the channel is sensed busy before transmission then the
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transmission is deferred for a "random" interval. This reduces the probability of collisions on the
channel
[1]
.

In wired networks i.e. Ethernet IEEE 802.3 Carrier Sensing with Collision Detection
(CSMA/CD) is used. In wireless LAN i.e. IEEE 802.11 Carrier Sensing with Collision
Avoidance (CSMA/CA) is used. Because in wireless LAN it becomes difficult to detect the
collision. The station in wireless network cannot do simultaneous operations of transmitting and
receiving. In order to detect the collision the station should be able to detect the presence of other
signal. For that the strength of the signal should not be low. In wired network the external factors
such as noise and interference is less therefore it does not affect the strength of the signal hence
detection becomes possible. But in wireless networks the signal strength is attenuated because of
the distance between the two stations, noise and interference. So the transmitting station can only
detect its own signal which has excellent strength and refuses to detect the presence of other
station.
[2]
Security
Security is a concern in Wi-Fi. Additional efforts are needed to keep private communication
secure. Integrity of the data is important in Wi-Fi so that the data is not modified or changed .We
has to protect the data that is being transmitted between Access Point and clients.
Communication form eavesdropping. We implement wired equivalent Privacy (WEP) protocol.
This protocol helps protect the data at link level during the transmission. It uses cyclic
redundancy check to ensure data integrity. But WEP is a weak approach to provide security as it
deals with the 40-bit or 104-bit key is concatenated with 24 bit initializing vector. The resulting
key is an input to random number generator. The resulting key is used for encryption.WEP
security mechanism is useful for small and manageable networks
[3]
. RC4 encryption with static
key which can be cracked by hackers risking privacy and integrity of data. WEP keys are
vulnerable to attack therefore the Wi-Fi alliance developed Wireless Protected Access (WPA) as
an improvement over WEP.
WPA deals with 40-bit or 104-bit RC4 encryption with a key which changes on every packet i.e.
not static .This dynamic key mechanism is known as Temporal Key Integrity Protocol
(TKIP).TKIP is part of 802.11i standard. But it too has disadvantages that are overcome by
Wireless Protected Access 2(WPA2).WPA2 uses 256 bit encryption key .As longer the key is
difficult to crack.802.11i is defining security standards by enhancing the MAC layer.
Another way to ensure security is using encryption and authorization in the application layer,
using technologies like SSL, SSH.
Some ways to ensure security:
Advanced Encryption Security (AES).
Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP).
Lightweight Extensible Authentication Protocol (LEAP).
Protected Extensible Authentication Protocol (PEAP).

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As you can see the image above you can configure Wi-Fi hotspots to secure or open. Open
network can be accessed by anyone. Secure WLAN can be accessed only with WEP key.

SSID: Service Set Identifier.

You can set SSID of your choice by default it has manufacturers name set. Network
access control can be implemented using as SSID associated with an AP. The SSID
provides a mechanism to segment a wireless network into multiple networks serviced by
one or more APs. A building might be segmented into multiple networks according to floor
or departments using SSIDs. Using SSID as password user can gain access to the network.
Thus SSID can act as a password. Thus a way to provide security to network we shall
avoid the broadcast of SSID
[3]
.

MAC Id filtering

Since MAC id is unique to a machine. Such mechanism is used In smaller private
networks where small number of users join the network using same machines frequently.
In this approach the Access Point is given list of valid MAC ids that are permitted to
access the network. However such systems are not useful in large public networks such as
wireless networks on airports.




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REFERENCES


1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_sense_multiple_access.

2. An Overview of Wireless LAN Standards IEEE 802.11 and IEEE 802.11e Jahanzeb
Farooq, Bilal Rauf Department of Computing Science Ume University, Sweden.

3. Wi-Fi Technology, National Telecom Regulatory Authority Technical Affairs and
Technology, Technology Tracking Department, July 2003.

4. skishore@lehigh.edu, Lehigh University.