Wi-Fi technology

1. INTRODUCTION

Wi-Fi short for “wireless fidelity”—is the commercial name for the 802.11 products that
have flooded the corporate wireless local area network (WLAN) market and are becoming
rapidly ingrained in our daily lives via public hotspots and digital home networks. It is a
trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance, founded in 1999 as Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance
(WECA), comprising more than 300 companies, whose products are certified by the Wi-Fi
Alliance, based on the IEEE 802.11 standards (also called Wireless LAN (WLAN) and Wi-Fi).
Wi-fi is a wireless technology that uses radio frequency to transmit data through the air.A Wi-Fi
enabled device such as a PC game console, mobile phone, MP3 player or PDA can connect to
the Internet when within range of a wireless network connected to the Internet. The coverage of
one or more interconnected access points called a hotspot can comprise an area as small as a
single room with wireless-opaque walls.There are three types of wireless technology, the
802.11b, the 802.11a, and the 802.11g. The first two are more commonly used, compared to the
last one. The difference of the first two is that the 802.11a is newer compared to the other and is
about five times faster than the 802.11b. The advantage of the 802.11g technology is that it is
backwards compatible with both the 802.11a and the 802.11b technology. And this is a big step
forward in the wireless networking world.

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2. Etymology and terminology

The name Wi-Fi, commercially used at least as early as August 1999, was coined by the
brand-consulting firm Interbrand. The Wi-Fi Alliance had hired Interbrand to create a name that
was "a little catchier than 'IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence'." Phil Belanger, a founding member
of the Wi-Fi Alliance, has stated that the term Wi-Fi was chosen from a list of ten potential
names invented by Interbrand.

The name Wi-Fi has no further meaning, and was never officially a shortened form of
"Wireless Fidelity". Nevertheless, the Wi-Fi Alliance used the advertising slogan "The Standard
for Wireless Fidelity" for a short time after the brand name was created, and the Wi-Fi Alliance
was also called the "Wireless Fidelity Alliance Inc" in some publications. The name is often
written as WiFi, Wifi, or wifi, but these are not approved by the Wi-Fi Alliance. IEEE is a
separate, but related, organization and their website has stated "WiFi is a short name for Wireless
Fidelity".

Interbrand also created the Wi-Fi logo. The yin-yang Wi-Fi logo indicates the certification of
a product for interoperability.

Non-Wi-Fi technologies intended for fixed points, such as Motorola Canopy, are usually
described as fixed wireless. Alternative wireless technologies include mobile phone standards,
such as 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G and LTE.

To connect to a Wi-Fi LAN, a computer must be equipped with a wireless network

interface controller. The combination of a computer and an interface controller is called a station.
Stations are identified by one or more MAC addresses.

Wi-Fi nodes often operate in infrastructure mode where all communications go through a
base station. Ad hoc mode refers to devices talking directly to each other without the need to first
talk to an access point.

A service set is the set of all the devices associated with a particular Wi-Fi network.
Devices in a service set need not be on the same wavebands or channels. A service set can be
local, independent, extended, or mesh or a combination.

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Each service set has an associated identifier, the 32-byte Service Set Identifier (SSID),
which identifies the particular network. The SSID is configured within the devices that are
considered part of the network.

A Basic Service Set (BSS) is a group of stations that all share the same wireless channel,
SSID, and other wireless settings that have wirelessly connected (usually to the same access
point). Each BSS is identified by a MAC address which is called the BSSID.

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3. DEPENDABILITY
WiFi is becoming rapidly ingrained in our daily lives via public hotspots and digital
home networks. However, because a technology’s dependability requirements are proportional to
its pervasiveness, newer applications mandate a deeper understanding of how much we can rely
on WiFi and its security promises. Authentication and confidentiality are crucial issues for
corporate WiFi use, but privacy and availability tend to dominate pervasive usage. So far, WiFi
hasn’t had the best track record: researchers and hackers easily defeated its first security
mechanism, Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP). Although the 802.11i standard addresses this
failure and the larger issues of confidentiality and authentication, no ongoing standardization
effort handles WiFi availability, and problems with robustness mean that a successful attack can
block a network and its services, at least for the attack’s duration. Another oft-neglected aspect
of 802.11 networks is privacy—not payload confidentiality but node activity monitoring. This
kind of monitoring has value on its own (for example, for contrasting user identification and
location), but it also has a strong link to dependability in attacks targeted at a specific node.

To our knowledge, no current practical or theoretical framework handles WiFi

dependability issues. Moreover, no previous work has analyzed WiFi security from this
viewpoint. Most research examines WiFi confidentiality and authentication by explaining the
problems related to native 802.11 security and showing how inadequate such mechanisms are.
The same effort hasn’t been put into analyzing a wireless network’s availability and robustness:
in fact, many denial-of-service (DoS) attacks against WLANs are known, but so far only one
research effort describes the actual implementation of two DoS attacks and possible
countermeasures.

The intended goal is to provide a foundation to discuss WiFi dependability and its impact
on current and future usage scenarios. Although a wireless network’s overall security depends on
the network stack to the application layer, this report focuses on specific vulnerabilities at the
physical (PHY) and data (MAC) layers of 802.11 networks.

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The OSI Layer

3.1 HOW DOES IT WORK?

Wireless Internet Access has four components that form its structure: high-speed access,
a networking gateway, a wireless network and a wireless customer. The customer connects
wirelessly through the wireless network to the gateway, itthen launches their internet browser,
authenticates through the gate-way by entering a coupon code or purchasing time and the user
has high-speed internet.
The four components are:
1) High-speed access which is also known as broadband is an internet connection which is
generally faster than dial up service. Examples of high-speed internet access are ISDN, cable
modem, DSL, and also satellite services.

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2) Network Gateway is between your high-speed access connection and the wireless
network, it acts like a gate. This gate will prevent people from accessing your wireless network
unless you know about it, the gateway also allows managing tools as well. These can include
authentication, network monitoring, and other services such as printing and voice over IP.
3) Wireless local area network is a system of connecting PC's and other devices within the
same physical proximity using high-frequency radio waves instead of wires. Wireless networks
work as long as your wireless ready device is within range.
4) Wireless customers are people who have a PC and a wireless adapter which means they
can access the internet wirelessly. The wireless adapter can be built in or it can be an external
device plugged into your computer.
ADDING WI-FI TO A COMPUTER

One of the best things about WiFi is how simple it is. Many new laptops already come with a
WiFi card built in -- in many cases you don't have to do anything to start using WiFi. It is also
easy to add a WiFi card to an older laptop or a desktop PC . Here's what you do:
Buy a 802.11a, 802.11b or 802.11g network card. 802.11g has the advantage of higher
speeds and good interoperability on 802.11b equipment.
For a laptop, this card will normally be a PCMCIA card that you slide into a PCMCIA
slot on your laptop. Or you can buy a small external adapter and plug it into a USB port.
For a desktop machine, you can buy a PCI card that you install inside the machine, or a
small external adapter that you connect to the computer with a USB cable.
Install the card
Install the drivers for the card
Find an 802.11 hotspot
Access the hotspot.
A hotspot is a connection point for a WiFi network. It is a small box that is hardwired
into the Internet . The box contains an 802.11 radio that can simultaneously talk to up to 100 or
so 802.11 cards. There are many WiFi hotspots now available in public places like restaurants,
hotels, libraries and airports . You can also create your own hotspot in your home.
3.2 CONFIGURING WIFI

On the newest machines, an 802.11 card will automatically connect with an 802.11
hotspot and a network connection will be established. As soon as you turn on your machine, it
will connect and you will be able to browse the Web, send email, etc. using WiFi. On older
machines you often have to go through this simple 3-step process to connect to a hotspot:
Access the software for the 802.11 card -- normally there is an icon for the card down in
the system tray at the bottom right of the screen.

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Click the "Search button" in the software. The card will search for all of the available
hotspots in the area and show you a list.
Double-click on one of the hotspots to connect to it.
On ancient 802.11 equipment, there is no automatic search feature. You have to find what
is known as the SSID of the hotspot (usually a short word of 10 characters or less) as well as the
channel number (an integer between 1 and 11) and type these two pieces of information in
manually. All the search feature is doing is grabbing these two pieces of information from the
radio signals generated by the hotspot and displaying them for you.

3.3 WIFI SECURITY

WiFi hotspots can be open or secure. If a hotspot is open, then anyone with a WiFi card
can access the hotspot. If it is secure, then the user needs to know a WEP key to connect.
WEP stands for Wired Equivalent Privacy, and it is an encryption system for the data that
802.11 sends through the air. WEP has two variations: 64-bit encryption (really 40-bit) and 128-
bit encryption (really 104-bit). 40-bit encryption was the original standard but was found to be
easily broken. 128-bit encryption is more secure and is what most people use if they enable
WEP.
For a casual user, any hotspot that is using WEP is inaccessible unless you know the
WEP key. If you are setting up a hotspot in your home, you may want to create and use a 128-bit
WEP key to prevent the neighbors from casually eavesdropping on your network.
Whether at home or on the road, you need to know the WEP key, and then enter it into the WiFi
card's software, to gain access to the network.
The Wi-Fi Alliance recently announced Wi-Fi Direct, a new peer-to-peer protocol that
will enable direct connections between Wi-Fi client devices, allowing users to do everything
from syncing data between a smartphone and a laptop to displaying pictures on a flat screen
television or printing them on a wireless printer—all without requiring the user to join a
traditional Wi-Fi network.
The WFA intends to finalize the specification by the end of 2009, and to begin certifying
products in mid-2010. In the meantime, many chip manufacturers (and Wi-Fi Alliance member
companies) are offering their own pre-specification solutions, including Atheros Direct Connect,
Intel My WiFi Technology, and Marvell Mobile Hotspot—all of which should be easily
upgradeable to the final specification next year.
In fact, interoperability with legacy devices is a key benefit of the protocol: not only will
Wi-Fi Direct generally require just a simple software upgrade, but only one of the connecting
devices (not both) has to be certified to the new specification. “Any Wi-Fi CERTIFIED a or g
device out there can make Wi-Fi Direct connections with devices that have been certified to the
protocol,” says Wi-Fi Alliance marketing director Kelly Davis-Felner.

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4. VULNERABILITIES AT THE PHY LAYER

WiFi uses a single narrow-band radio channel on a public frequency. Radio

communications are typically multiplexed and based on some combination of space, frequency,
time, and coding—WiFi exploits the first three. Current WiFi networks rely on two different
basic coding techniques: the Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS), which 11b and 11g
devices use, and Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), which 11a and 11g
devices use. Nodes on the same frequency share a single channel, which the 802.11 MAC layer
serializes through random access and contention mechanisms. These characteristics allow for
several attacks.

4.1 Interception

It’s not surprising that an attacker can intercept a radio communication, but the threat’s
relevance clearly depends on the nature of the leaked information. Most cryptographic protocols
address content eavesdropping but pay little attention to privacy issues. The 802.11 standard
never uses mechanisms for preventing traffic analysis, so it’s fairly easy to infer the number of
“talking” nodes, their identities and who’s talking to whom. This lets an attacker violate user
privacy.

he prologue of any content-eavesdropping attack is channel selection. Unfortunately, the

limited number of channels and frequencies in WiFi devices make this step trivial—moreover,
any 802.11 device has built-in capabilities to scan and report activity on all available channels.

4.2 Injection

Radio transmission, can’t be confined in a restricted area, so WiFi relies on logical access
control mechanisms for authorized access. However, this heavily limits the validity of well-
established security tools such as firewalls and network intrusion detection systems, so
authorized traffic is instead validated as it flows over the wireless link. In practice, though, this
activity constrains the upper network layers in their attempt to provide specific security
mechanisms. As a solution, the MAC level could provide data source authentication for every
transmitted frame by identifying the source as a specific node or as a member of a trusted group.

4.3 Jamming

Radio communications are subject to jamming, which is cheap and easy to do in a narrow-
band channel such as the one WiFi devices occupy. Jamming can make corporate WLANs
unavailable, which is certainly annoying, or even block a residential phone network or hospital
medical infrastructure, which is much scarier. The WiFi nodes themselves can easily detect a jam

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because each station already monitors channel quality for AP and bit-rate selection, but locating
the actual attacker is a different story.

4.4 Locating mobile nodes

Wandering through a wireless world, an attacker can easily track MAC addresses and
build a database that lists wireless nodes, their locations, and their movements, even for wearable
devices such as PDAs. Although a wireless node’s exact position might be hard to get, it’s much
easier to detect its presence in a large area. If the device is a personal one, this could even help
someone track the device owner’s location.

4.5 Hijacking

Man-in-the-middle attacks are a traditional threat against access control solutions.

Although it’s easy for attackers to intercept wireless traffic and inject an attack, it isn’t trivial to
hijack a wireless channel. The attacker must ensure that the two victims can’t talk directly, thus
the targets must either lie outside each other’s radio range or be desynchronized. An attacker can
try to jam the receiver while still being able to access the transmitted traffic—for example, by
using directional antennas or a set of two probes near the sender and the receiver.

4.6 Energy

Batteries are a key enabling factor for mobility in radio networks, but a limited energy
supply can easily become a perfect target for availability attacks. Although breakthroughs in
energy production technology will hopefully mitigate this problem, the short-term impact on

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security is twofold: power-conservation features and their protection become vital, and any
security mechanism must be carefully evaluated against its energy cost.

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5. VULNERABILITIES AT THE MAC LAYER

Although it inherits the underlying PHY layer’s insecurity, the 802.11 MAC layer adds
some peculiar weaknesses of its own. Its “dangerous” features are that it implements a shared
channel and must synchronize among different parties, making it much more complex than
Ethernet. These three broad categories leave the network open to several different vulnerabilities.

5.1 Shared channel

When many nodes use the same channel, their traffic must be distinguishable—
accordingly, 802.11 networks use a MAC address as a static station identifier. A shared channel
also implies a shared bandwidth, thus transmission speed lowers if several nodes use it
simultaneously. It might seem that limiting the number of users per cell would guarantee an
adequate bandwidth per node, but this doesn’t really work because the 802.11 MAC layer allows
the coexistence of many independent cells on the same physical channel, each with its own
nodes. The 802.11e standard deals with providing quality of service over WiFi networks via
traffic prioritization mechanisms, but these mechanisms rely fully on the existing MAC layer, its
rules, and, more important, its vulnerabilities. As such, the proposed quality-of-service
mechanisms don’t enforce availability.

5.2 Synchronization

Anything that’s simple in a wired environment (such as network cables plugged into wall
sockets) must be emulated with special frames in the wireless world, which can lead to problems
when synchronizing state transitions between two or more entities. As in any system in which
two or more parties must remain synchronized to work, a successful desynchronization forced by
an attacker leads to a system malfunction.

5.3 Upper levels

Applications that deal with personal information are extremely vulnerable to data capture
and disclosure. At first glance, home banking might seem to be the most sensitive application,
but most banks provide secure access through their SSL channels. The real issue here is
privacymost services typically aren’t protected in the network stack’s upper layers and carry
information that attackers can use to profile and track potential victims.

Vulnerabilities typically narrow the available bandwidth, and a narrow channel incurs
delays that can hurt real-time services—as noted earlier, multimedia streams in particular are
very sensitive to delays in packet delivery because they directly affect quality of service.

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5.4 Lab experience

The analysis that presented so far raises a key question: how real are the threats we’ve
outlined? To answer that question, we built some attack tools that exploit a few of the
vulnerabilities discussed here and tested them against a small WiFi network in our labs. Every
test had three key objectives: to understand whether the attack could really be implemented from
commercial off-the-shelf components, to determine the actual effects on WiFi activity, and to
figure out how to isolate the attack with an intrusion detection module.

All the attacks that tested use off-the-shelf hardware and open source device drivers,
and are fairly easy to do.Under some attack conditions, the target network was completely
blocked for the test’s whole duration. A packet capture engine could detect almost all the attacks,
and all of them introduced various anomalies in network behavior.

5.5 MAC-level jamming

Our version of the jamming attack consisted of a special test mode already available in
the devices that used, which gave us continuous transmission regardless of MAC-level access
rules. This caused constant collisions with every other station in the cell, which was then totally
blocked. Because colliding stations back off and don’t transmit for some time. The tests have
shown that a 10 percent jamming period was enough to halt transmission in a cell.The jamming
effect spanned across three adjacent WiFi channels, but this attack didn’t require packet injection
techniques and thus was hardly detectable with a network-layer intrusion detection system.

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6. Operational principles
Wi-Fi stations communicate by sending each other data packets: blocks of data individually
sent and delivered over radio. As with all radio, this is done by the modulating and demodulation
of carrier waves. Different versions of Wi-Fi use different techniques, 802.11b uses DSSS on a
single carrier, whereas 802.11a, Wi-Fi 4, 5 and 6 use multiple carriers on slightly different
frequencies within the channel (OFDM).

Wi-Fi Generations

Generation/IEEE
Maximum Linkrate Adopted Frequency
Standard

Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax) 600 to 9608 Mbit/s 2019 6 GHz

Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) 600 to 9608 Mbit/s 2019 2.4/5 GHz

Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) 433 to 6933 Mbit/s 2014 5 GHz

Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n) 72 to 600 Mbit/s 2008 2.4/5 GHz

802.11g 6 to 54 Mbit/s 2003 2.4 GHz

802.11a 6 to 54 Mbit/s 1999 5 GHz

802.11b 1 to 11 Mbit/s 1999 2.4 GHz

802.11 1 to 2 Mbit/s 1997 2.4 GHz

As with other IEEE 802 LANs, stations come programmed with a globally unique 48-bit
MAC address (often printed on the equipment) so that each Wi-Fi station has a unique address.
The MAC addresses are used to specify both the destination and the source of each data packet.
Wi-Fi establishes link-level connections, which can be defined using both the destination and
source addresses. On the reception of a transmission, the receiver uses the destination address to
determine whether the transmission is relevant to the station or should be ignored. A network
interface normally does not accept packets addressed to other Wi-Fi stations.
Due to the ubiquity of Wi-Fi and the ever-decreasing cost of the hardware needed to
support it, many manufacturers now build Wi-Fi interfaces directly into PC motherboards,
eliminating the need for installation of a separate wireless network card.

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Channels are used half duplex and can be time-shared by multiple networks. When
communication happens on the same channel, any information sent by one computer is locally
received by all, even if that information is intended for just one destination. [c] The network
interface card interrupts the CPU only when applicable packets are received: the card ignores
information not addressed to it. The use of the same channel also means that the data bandwidth
is shared, such that, for example, available data bandwidth to each device is halved when two
stations are actively transmitting.
A scheme known as carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA)
governs the way stations share channels. With CSMA/CA stations attempt to avoid collisions by
beginning transmission only after the channel is sensed to be "idle", but then transmit their
packet data in its entirety. However for geometric reasons, it cannot completely prevent
collisions. A collision happens when a station receives multiple signals on a channel at the same
time. This corrupts the transmitted data and can require stations to re-transmit. The lost data and
re-transmission reduces throughput, in some cases severely.
6.1 Waveband
The 802.11 standard provides several distinct radio frequency ranges for use in
Wi-Fi communications: 900 MHz, 2.4 GHz, 3.6 GHz, 4.9 GHz, 5 GHz, 5.9 GHz and 60
GHz bands.Each range is divided into a multitude of channels. In the standards, channels
are numbered at 5 MHz spacing within a band (except in the 60 GHz band, where they
are 2.16 GHz apart), and the number refers to the centre frequency of the channel.
Although channels are numbered at 5 MHz spacing, transmitters generally occupy at least
20 MHz, and standards allow for channels to be bonded together to form wider channels
for higher throughput. Those are numbered by the primary and secondary channels of the
bonded group respectively

In the 2.4 GHz wavebands as well as others, transmitters straddle multiple channels.
Overlapping channels can suffer from interference unless this is a small portion of the total
received power.
Countries apply their own regulations to the allowable channels, allowed users and
maximum power levels within these frequency ranges. The "ISM" band ranges are also often

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improperly used because some do not know the difference between Part 15 and Part 18 of the
FCC rules.
802.11b/g/n can use the 2.4 GHz Part 15 band, operating in the United States under Part 15 Rules
and Regulations. In this frequency band equipment may occasionally suffer interference from
microwave ovens, cordless telephones, USB 3.0 hubs, and Bluetooth devices.
Spectrum assignments and operational limitations are not consistent worldwide: Australia
and Europe allow for an additional two channels (12, 13) beyond the 11 permitted in the United
States for the 2.4 GHz band, while Japan has three more (12–14). In the US and other countries,
802.11a and 802.11g devices may be operated without a licence, as allowed in Part 15 of the
FCC Rules and Regulations.
802.11a/h/j/n/ac/ax can use the 5 GHz U-NII band, which, for much of the world, offers at least
23 non-overlapping 20 MHz channels rather than the 2.4 GHz frequency band, where the
channels are only 5 MHz wide. In general, lower frequencies have better range but have less
capacity. The 5 GHz bands are absorbed to a greater degree by common building materials than
the 2.4 GHz bands and usually give a shorter range.
As 802.11 specifications evolved to support higher throughput, the protocols have
become much more efficient in their use of bandwidth. Additionally, they have gained the ability
to aggregate (or 'bond') channels together to gain still more throughput where the bandwidth is
available. 802.11n allows for double radio spectrum/bandwidth (40 MHz- 8 channels) compared
to 802.11a or 802.11g (20 MHz). 802.11n can also be set to limit itself to 20 MHz bandwidth to
prevent interference in dense communities. In the 5 GHz band, 20 MHz, 40 MHz, 80 MHz, and
160 MHz bandwidth signals are permitted with some restrictions, giving much faster
connections.
6.2 Communication stack
Wi-Fi is part of the IEEE 802 protocol family. The data is organized into 802.11 frames
that are very similar to Ethernet frames at the data link layer, but with extra address fields. MAC
addresses are used as network addresses for routing over the LAN.
Wi-Fi's MAC and physical layer (PHY) specifications are defined by IEEE 802.11 for
modulating and receiving one or more carrier waves to transmit the data in the infrared, and 2.4,
3.6, 5, or 60 GHz frequency bands. They are created and maintained by the IEEE LAN/MAN
Standards Committee (IEEE 802). The base version of the standard was released in 1997 and has
had many subsequent amendments. The standard and amendments provide the basis for wireless
network products using the Wi-Fi brand. While each amendment is officially revoked when it is
incorporated in the latest version of the standard, the corporate world tends to market to the
revisions because they concisely denote capabilities of their products. As a result, in the market
place, each revision tends to become its own standard.
In addition to 802.11 the IEEE 802 protocol family has specific provisions for Wi-Fi.
These are required because Ethernet's cable-based media are not usually shared, whereas with
wireless all transmissions are received by all stations within the range that employ that radio

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channel. While Ethernet has essentially negligible error rates, wireless communication media are
subject to significant interference. Therefore, the accurate transmission is not guaranteed so
delivery is, therefore, a best-effort delivery mechanism. Because of this, for Wi-Fi, the Logical
Link Control (LLC) specified by IEEE 802.2 employs Wi-Fi's media access control (MAC)
protocols to manage retries without relying on higher levels of the protocol stack.
For internetworking purposes, Wi-Fi is usually layered as a link layer (equivalent to the
physical and data link layers of the OSI model) below the internet layer of the Internet Protocol.
This means that nodes have an associated internet address and, with suitable connectivity, this
allows full Internet access.

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7. Network security

The main issue with wireless network security is its simplified access to the network
compared to traditional wired networks such as Ethernet. With wired networking, one must
either gain access to a building (physically connecting into the internal network), or break
through an external firewall. To access Wi-Fi, one must merely be within the range of the Wi-Fi
network. Most business networks protect sensitive data and systems by attempting to disallow
external access. Enabling wireless connectivity reduces security if the network uses inadequate
or no encryption.

An attacker who has gained access to a Wi-Fi network router can initiate a DNS spoofing
attack against any other user of the network by forging a response before the queried DNS server
has a chance to reply.

7.1 Securing methods

A common measure to deter unauthorized users involves hiding the access point's name
by disabling the SSID broadcast. While effective against the casual user, it is ineffective as a
security method because the SSID is broadcast in the clear in response to a client SSID query.
Another method is to only allow computers with known MAC addresses to join the network, but
determined eavesdroppers may be able to join the network by spoofing an authorized address.
Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) encryption was designed to protect against casual
snooping but it is no longer considered secure. Tools such as AirSnort or Aircrack-ng can
quickly recover WEP encryption keys.Because of WEP's weakness the Wi-Fi Alliance approved
Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) which uses TKIP. WPA was specifically designed to work with
older equipment usually through a firmware upgrade. Though more secure than WEP, WPA has
known vulnerabilities.
The more secure WPA2 using Advanced Encryption Standard was introduced in 2004
and is supported by most new Wi-Fi devices. WPA2 is fully compatible with WPA. In 2017, a
flaw in the WPA2 protocol was discovered, allowing a key replay attack, known as KRACK.A
flaw in a feature added to Wi-Fi in 2007, called Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS), let WPA and
WPA2 security be bypassed, and effectively broken in many situations. The only remedy as of
late 2011 was to turn off Wi-Fi Protected Setup, which is not always possible.
Virtual Private Networks can be used to improve the confidentiality of data carried through Wi-
Fi networks, especially public Wi-Fi networks.
7.2 Data security risks
The older wireless encryption-standard, Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), has been
shown easily breakable even when correctly configured. Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA and
WPA2) encryption, which became available in devices in 2003, aimed to solve this problem. Wi-
Fi access points typically default to an encryption-free (open) mode. Novice users benefit from a
zero-configuration device that works out-of-the-box, but this default does not enable any

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wireless security, providing open wireless access to a LAN. To turn security on requires the user
to configure the device, usually via a software graphical user interface (GUI). On unencrypted
Wi-Fi networks connecting devices can monitor and record data (including personal
information). Such networks can only be secured by using other means of protection, such as a
VPN or secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol over Transport Layer Security (HTTPS).
Wi-Fi Protected Access encryption (WPA2) is considered secure, provided a strong passphrase is
used. In 2018, WPA3 was announced as a replacement for WPA2, increasing security; it rolled
out on June 26.

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8. Societal aspects

Wireless internet access has become much more embedded in society. It has thus changed how
the society functions in many ways.

8.1 Influence on developing countries

Over half the world does not have access to the internet, prominently rural areas in
developing nations. Technology that has been implemented in more developed nations is often
costly and low energy efficient. This has led to developing nations using more low-tech
networks, frequently implementing renewable power sources that can solely be maintained
through solar power, creating a network that is resistant to disruptions such as power outages.
For instance, in 2007 a 450 km (280 mile) network between Cabo Pantoja and Iquitos in Peru
was erected in which all equipment is powered only by solar panels. These long-range Wi-Fi
networks have two main uses: offer internet access to populations in isolated villages, and to
provide healthcare to isolated communities. In the case of the aforementioned example, it
connects the central hospital in Iquitos to 15 medical outposts which are intended for remote
diagnosis.

8.2 Work Habits

Access to Wi-Fi in public spaces such as cafes or parks allows people, in particular
freelancers, to work remotely. An article from 2009 notes that the availability of wireless access
allows people to choose from a wide range of places to work in. While the accessibility of Wi-Fi
is the strongest factor when choosing a place to work (75% of people would choose a place that
provides Wi-Fi over one that does not), other factors influence the choice of specific hotspot.
These vary from the accessibility of other resources, like books, the location of the workplace,
and the social aspect of meeting other people in the same place. Moreover, the increase of people
working from public places results in more customers for local businesses thus providing an
economic stimulus to the area.
Additionally, in the same study it has been noted that wireless connection provides more
freedom of movement while working. Both when working at home or from the office it allows
the displacement between different rooms or areas. In some offices (notably Cisco offices in
New York) the employees do not have assigned desks but can work from any office connecting
their laptop to Wi-Fi hotspot.

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8.3 Housing
The internet has become an integral part of living. 81.9% of American households have
internet access.Additionally, 89% of American households with broadband connect via wireless
technologies. 72.9% of American households have Wi-Fi.
Wi-Fi networks have also affected how the interior of homes and hotels are arranged. For
instance, architects have described that their clients no longer wanted only one room as their
home office, but would like to work near the fireplace or have the possibility to work in different
rooms. This contradicts architect's pre-existing ideas of the use of rooms that they designed.
Additionally, some hotels have noted that guests prefer to stay in certain rooms since they
receive a stronger Wi-Fi network.

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9. Health concerns

The World Health Organization (WHO) says, "no health effects are expected from
exposure to RF fields from base stations and wireless networks", but notes that they promote
research into effects from other RF sources. (a category used when "a causal association is
considered credible, but when chance, bias or confounding cannot be ruled out with
reasonable confidence"), this classification was based on risks associated with wireless phone
use rather than Wi-Fi networks.
The United Kingdom's Health Protection Agency reported in 2007 that exposure to Wi-Fi
for a year results in the "same amount of radiation from a 20-minute mobile phone call".
A review of studies involving 725 people who claimed electromagnetic hypersensitivity,
"...suggests that 'electromagnetic hypersensitivity' is unrelated to the presence of an EMF,
although more research into this phenomenon is required."

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10.Alternatives

Several other "wireless" technologies provide alternatives to Wi-Fi in some cases:

 Bluetooth, short-distance network
 Bluetooth Low Energy, a low-power variant
 Zigbee, low-power, low data rate, and proximity
 Cellular networks, as used by smartphones
 WiMax, provide wireless internet connection from outside individual homes
Some alternatives are "no new wires", re-using existing cable:
 G.hn over existing home wiring, such as phone and power lines
Several wired technologies for computer networking provide, in some cases, viable alternatives
—in particular:
 Ethernet over twisted pair

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11. References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/wi-fi/

https://www.wi-fi.org

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6677051.stm

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