Maintaining Knowledge of Your Wireless Networks


By constantly reviewing the updates to IEEE standards and the application of new patches to wireless networks you can stay on top of your security.

Monitoring sites such as wardriving.com can keep you aware of whether or not your access points are on that list.

Keeping Track of People, Places, and Things

Make sure you are keeping track of security events such as failed login attempts. Although these might just be indications of users forgetting their passwords, it also could be signs of a break-in attempt. By being alert to such indicators you can keep your users happy and attackers frustrated.

Ensure that firewall logging is also being monitored . You can learn quite a bit from unsuccessful as well as successful traffic. Usage patterns and attacks can be traced just through periodic review of your logs.

Occasional access point discovery can make your job easier. By using tools such as Network Stumbler and utilities that come with the wireless card you can discover rouge access points. You can also find out whether your desired signal levels are being maintained in each region of WLAN coverage.

Wireless Networking “Related IEEE Standards

By knowing which standards are still in draft and which ones are approved you can make educated buying decisions. Make sure that you check with the IEEE Web site (http://standards.ieee.org/wireless/) regularly. Here are some of the standards that might have an affect on your future WLAN architecture:

  • 802.11e ”Quality of Service. The purpose of this standard is to enhance the current 802.11 Medium Access Control (MAC) to improve and manage Quality of Service and provide classes of service. The applications that could benefit from this standard include transport of voice, audio, and video over 802.11 wireless networks, video conferencing, and media stream distribution.

  • 802.11f ”Access Point Interoperability. This standard calls for recommended practices for Inter-Access Point Protocol (IAPP), which provides the necessary capabilities to achieve multivendor AP interoperability across a distributed system.

  • 802.11h ”Interference. This standard relates to the 802.11a (5GHz) range. It calls for network management and control extensions to allow for spectrum and transmit power management. This would enable regulatory acceptance of 802.11 5GHz products.

  • 802.11i ”Security. This standard proposes enhancing the Medium Access Control layer to enhance security and authentication mechanisms. 802.11x is a portion of this standard.

Other Resources

Using the wealth of information that's available from the many vendors of wireless products, as well as software vendors such as Microsoft, is invaluable. There are many newsgroups focused on wireless security as well.

Communicating with other administrators who have implemented a similar wireless environment such as your company's can be very helpful. User groups such as the Bay Area Wireless User Group provide great suggestions as to product configurations and modifications.

Some useful Web sites include the following:

  • IEEE 802.11 (http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/802/11/)

  • Wi-Fi Alliance (http://www.wi-fi.org/)

  • War Driving (http://www.wardriving.com)

  • WLAN Monitoring (http://www.airdefense.net)

  • Network Stumbler (http://www.netstumbler.com)



Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Insider Solutions
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Insider Solutions
ISBN: 0672326094
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 325

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net