Progress Check: Introduction to WLAN and Wireless Security

My current Network Security classes have taken me into the depths of wireless local area networks (WLANs) and encryption methods.

Wireless networks as a topic has been largely absent from my CCNA study, since I’m still working my way through the joys of VLANs and trunking on physical ethernet cables and interfaces.

If you think about it, it’s kind of bizarre considering most network connections today are wireless connections – at home, at work, in public spaces.

Setting up a simple home network will also make you realise that most of the Cisco network devices like switches, routers and modems have largely been consolidated into a single device that any household can quickly set up out-of-the-box and gain access to the internet.

At some point, I was getting bored with these abstract networking concepts that felt too old-school and irrelevant to everyday scenarios, and I took a break to work on practical skills like Linux commands (more on that in future).

But alas, I find myself hungry to learn more about how networking concepts apply to a wireless environment.

Wireless networks do away with the physical connections of ethernet cables. Instead, the wireless access point utilises radio waves that can transmit data through the air.

While this makes network connectivity far more convenient and scalable, it also opens up the network to greater security risk since the signal is transmitted omni-directionally, rather than directly through a physical cable.

This is why authentication and encryption is particularly important for wireless networks.

Authentication certifies that the client device is trusted, usually by some form of credentials like passwords or digital certificates. This ensures that the client and the network both trust each other and can establish a secure connection.

Encryption, on the other hand, scrambles data so that it cannot be intercepted and viewed in transit by third parties. Access points act similar to ethernet hubs in that they do not direct traffic solely to its intended destination, but rather broadcast it out to all receiving clients.

Hence, it is critical to encrypt data so that only the intended client can view the message. Imagine if other people on your wi-fi network received what you were looking at!

It’s remarkable how far wi-fi has evolved in such a short period of time.

The different iterations of wi-fi have made wireless connections stronger, faster and more secure. Just look at the evolution of wireless encryption from Wired Equivalent Privacy (which can be easily cracked and decrypted) to the prevalence of Wi-Fi Protected Access (including WPA2 and WPA3 that use industry-standard AES encryption).

Encryption is such a fascinating subject because it establishes an avenue for secure communication by the source and destination only. And a quick search into the different methods of encryption will show you just how varied and complicated this process can be, all just to guarantee the integrity of a message in transit.

It won’t be long before I’m done with another term of classes, and I’ll be free enough to return back to my usual schedule of CCNA revision.

But I think jumping into WLANs and learning about how networks operate in an everyday setting gave me a good boost of motivation to keep studying.

It certainly seems like I’m getting somewhere.