KF7031 Wireless Networks and Security.

KF7031 - Wireless Networks and Security - Northumbria University

Programme Goals and Objectives

Learning outcomes will be addressed in this assignment:

Learning outcome 1 - Be able to describe, explain critically and analyse wireless data communication technology along with associated security issues.

Learning outcome 2 - Be able to analyse and model wireless behaviour using appropriate mathematics

Learning outcome 3 - Critically analyse enterprise requirements for wireless systems

Learning outcome 4 - Critically analyse 802.11 protocol information

Learning outcome 5 - Make critical decisions about designing secure wireless networks

Title: 802.11 WLAN data throughput and security overheads

Instructions on Assessment:

Your work must be presented in the form of a short technical paper and be no longer than 7 sides plus a facing page that includes the abstract, but excluding the appendix and references. This should be printed on A4 paper and use a font size no smaller than 10. A mark penalty of -10%/additional page will be applied for submissions longer than required. For completeness you must include a detailed table of results within an appendix (not included in page count). You may if you wish include further additional material in an appendix but this will not contribute to the marks and you should not explicitly refer to any appendix to illustrate results etc. You could use an appendix to present a full derivation of formula.

Introduction

You are to perform a study on data throughput in 802.11 WLAN systems. This will be carried out with wireless security protocols in place and removed. The study will be partially theoretical and partially practical requiring you to build a theoretical model describing data throughput and verify this model through practical experimentation.

802.11 standards are often characterised by channel bit rates, for example 802.11b is usually described as supporting a bit rate of 11Mbps. WLAN users will notice that actual data throughput, as perceived by the clients on a WLAN only approaches half of this value and is sometimes even less. Implementing secure communications on the wireless link will reduce apparent throughput further. Users will sometimes put this lower actual bit rate down to underperforming systems, but this is usually not the case.The lower through put rate is primarily due to the MAC and physical layer overheads in the 802.11 architecture and is therefore intentional. Security protocols place additional overhead on communicationsand further reduce apparent throughput rates. Communication between a wireless client and an access point is governed by a strict set of protocols that introduces fixed delays in the communication channel. Indeed the delays do not change significantly despite faster underlying channel bit rates.