WIRELESS NETWORK & SECURITY

BN303
Contents
Introduction ....................................................................................................................................................... 2

WLAN Network Design ...................................................................................................................................... 3

WLAN Survey Site .......................................................................................................................................... 3

2D-Floor Plan ................................................................................................................................................. 3

3D-Floor Plan ................................................................................................................................................. 5

Heat Maps ......................................................................................................................................................... 6

Interference Map............................................................................................................................................... 7

WLAN Sniffing Result ......................................................................................................................................... 7

Report ................................................................................................................................................................ 9

Channel Occupancy ....................................................................................................................................... 9

Interference ................................................................................................................................................. 11

Coverage ...................................................................................................................................................... 12

Dual Bands and its advantages .................................................................................................................... 13

Security Implications ................................................................................................................................... 13

Other Aspect ................................................................................................................................................ 14

References ....................................................................................................................................................... 15

1
Introduction
The request for the competent network infrastructure has increased enormously with the evolution of inter
networks. Nowadays the small organization are also able to pay for this type of network infrastructure. With
these demands, everyone wants to stay connected with the network inside the network with the use of the
WLAN. Which the necessary invention of the last century. Now WLAN is available everywhere whether in
offices, shopping centre and etc.

This report is prepared for WLAN access points activity in the home network. With using the sniffing tools
like netspot, acrylic profession and etc.

2
WLAN Network Design
The Survey of the WLAN setup on the home network is done according to the task specification. The overview
of the network is given below as detailed as possible.

WLAN Survey Site

The sites chosen for this task is the home network. The detailed information about the home and its floor
map are given below.

AREA 270 sq. m.

FLOOR 3
PERSONAL AP 2

2D-Floor Plan
The floor plan is the essential part of this task. With this, it helps us in understating the actual environment
of the network setup. Given below is the detailed floor plan of a home network with every detailed as possible
with two personal AP’s installed at this location. There are other AP’s surrounding this site which creates the
huge interference with the installed Wi-Fi AP’s [3].

Figure 1: Ground Floor without any AP

3
 Figure 2: First Floor with master AP

Figure 3: Third Floor with secondary AP

Figure 4: Rooftop of the home

The tools used to create this floor plan is Planner 5D [1].

4
3D-Floor Plan
For the better understanding of home building, there is also 3D-Floor plan is made. The full rendered image
of the site with every detail is given below:

Figure 5: Ground Floor

Figure 6: First Floor

5
Heat Maps
The heat map helps in understating the signal strength in the WLAN network setup. The heat map of all the
channel is given below.

Figure 7: Heat Map for the Home AP

Figure 8: Heat Map for other AP on the same location

6
Interference Map

Figure 9: The Interference of the other AP’s with home PC

WLAN Sniffing Result

Now the main portion of the actual test result of the scan is given below for 3 different locations:

Location 1: Ground Floor

7
Location 2: First Floor

Location 3: Terrace

8
Report
The detailed report for the captured raw data information is given below. Each and every detailed is
mentioned regarding the WLAN network

The radios signal of a Wi-Fi network is dynamic and as such, area outside this 25dB threshold perimeter can
potentially be unreliable for data communication due various factors ( some of them are listed below)

- Humidity
- Rain
- General People
- Background Noise
- Electrical Interference
- Wi-Fi Transmissions
- Sources of interference can range from 2.40 GHz to 2.4835 GHz)

For the technical information gathering, we relied on the Acrylic Wi-Fi Analyzer tools. The general information
of the environment which are observed are as follows:

Selected Locations 3

Selected Scans 3

Selected Stations 9

Channel Occupancy
Scanned network that are detected during the scan are as given below.

Location Networks APs BSSIDs

ALL_FLOOR 7 10 11

Total 7 10 11

All the different network access point which are available all around the location of the home site. Some of
which are configured on the same channel due to which some interference is happening. But these channels
can be changed according to the collision of the signal on the WLAN router setting.

The following table contains [Hidden] network connected information, which is prepared based on the
transmitting frequencies:

9
 - SSID: It stands for Service Set Identifier.
- Channel: It Identifies the frequencies which are associated with the network.
- Frequency: It is the value of the frequency which is associated with the network.
- BSSID: It is the MAC addresses of the wireless access points.
- Vendor: Details of the device manufacturer.

SSID [Hidden]

Channel Frequency BSSID Vendor

7 2442 F8:E7:1E:18:77:D8 Ruckus Wireless

F8:E7:1E:58:77:D8 Ruckus Wireless

9 2452 50:68:0A:D7:5B:A2 HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES

CO.LTD

13 2472 F8:E7:1E:19:DD:F8 Ruckus Wireless

F8:E7:1E:59:DD:F8 Ruckus Wireless

The graphs given below show all the information about APs, BSSIDs and NETWORKS.

10
The graph which is given below shows the number of BSSIDs detected in the frequency range of 2.4 GHz.
None of the devices show the range of 5GHz.

Interference
Interference mainly caused by the devices communicating using the same channel. The strength of signal
reduces as it passes across different zone or materials in the environment. The denser the object, the weaker
the strength of the signal will be. The factors that affect the strength of the signal and create noises are given
below.

- Objects: Trees, walls, buildings, and other.

- Radio interference: Wireless 802.11b/g use an RF range of 2.4GHz to 5GHz, but their other devices
also introduce some interface like cordless phones, walkie-talkie, microwaves, and others.
- Electrical Interference like high transmission line, transformers and others can introduce attenuation
and weak signal strength
- Environmental factors also like lightning, foggy weather, rain and others

Information about the actual physical AP detected during a scan, All BSSIDs that are managed by the same
physical device, as well as the number of clients connected to each one of them during the survey.

11
For each physical access point, its information is given below:

BSSID SSID Chan Freq. 802.11

02:1A:11:F2:0A:65 Nexus7 1 2412 b, g, n, ac

38:A4:ED:57:66:89 Pank 11 2462 b, g, n

50:68:0A:D7:5B:A2 [Hidden] 9 2452 b, g, n

50:68:0A:D7:5B:A3 Open 9 2452 b, g, n

E4:8D:8C:30:9D:3B TNET3--Wi-Fi--Mob:- 3 2422 b, g

9212311428

F8:E7:1E:18:77:D8 [Hidden] 7 2442 g, n

F8:E7:1E:19:DD:F8 [Hidden] 13 2472 g, n

F8:E7:1E:58:77:D8 [Hidden] 7 2442 g, n

F8:E7:1E:59:DD:F8 [Hidden] 13 2472 g, n

Coverage
The coverage of the Wi-Fi network mainly depended on its location and signal strength. The RSSI value shows
all the information of the received signal on the using wireless device.

It displays all those locations where the received signal strength falls below the threshold value.
Communication quality significantly impacts due the signal strength. The unit in which the signal strength is
measured is dBm. It ranges from 0 to -100 dBm. 0 is the stronger signal strength and -100 is the weaker signal
strength.

Note: The recommended value usually ranges from 0 to -75 dBm.

Now, the current configuration of the AP is sufficient and it covers all the major area inside the home but the
main problem exists when we go outside the home building. Because the signal strength gets dropped and
the attenuation increases. This happens mainly due to the number of objects coming between the AP and
the wireless devices.

12
 - First solution: Install AP at higher location doing this will decrease the number of walls and other
object coming between the devices
- Second solution: Install the Wi-Fi range extenders. These devices work like a repeater.

Dual Bands and its advantages

The spectrum band are defined by the government for the purpose of the scientific and industrial used of
the radios frequencies. The most common spectrum which is popular in the WLAN setup is the 2.4 GHz but
now the 5GHz band is also available. Now the router must capable of supporting both the band then it is
advantageous to the user. Now the router will be more costly as compared to the normal available WLAN
AP. The main advantages of the Dual Band router are as follows.

- Provide solutions to various signal interference which is very common in these days.
- Compatible with every wireless device
- Enable customization of the wireless network setting.
- Less crowding from other network

Security Implications
The wired network is the most secure network because in order to get access the device must be physically
connected. In the WLAN setup, the designer has to thought about various limitation such as security
vulnerabilities, radio signal interference, multipath propagation, and other issues [2].

The security vulnerability is the common issue in the WLAN setup and they are.

- Passive Monitoring: In this, the attacker can easily monitor the traffic of the WLAN network without
the need of plugging the device physically.
- Unauthorized access: The unauthorized access can be done using the brute force attack and other
mechanism. This happens due to everybody knows the basic functioning of the WLAN setup.
- Denial-of-service attacks: This attack is very dangerous because it denies all the services on the Wi-
Fi router. And even can damage the appliance physically.

13
 Figure 10: Wi-Fi LAN security vulnerabilities

Other Aspect
There are other things which can affect the signal strength of the Wi-Fi signal.

- Like attenuation caused by body, bag and etc. We have tested attenuation with the human body
placing between the AP and the wireless devices and the test shows the below results:
SSID RSSI Without Human Body RSSI With Human Body
HIDDEN -35 -55 to -80
OPEN -38 -57 to -90
- The downloading and upload speeds also get affected due to the signal strength.

14
References

[1] Planner 5D, “Create Home Design and interior decor in 2D & 3D.” [Online]. Available:
https://planner5d.com/e/. [Accessed: 11-Sep-2017].

[2] M. Harwood, Exam cram : CompTIA Network+. Pearson, 2009.

[3] Floor Planner, “FloorPlanner.” [Online]. Available:

http://www.smallblueprinter.com/floorplan/floorplan.html. [Accessed: 11-Sep-2017].

15