Mile2 Cybersecurity Certifications

Cybersecurity Certifications

Reply To: OCU C)HT B Discussion Lesson 12

#98901
Trae Johnson
Participant

Wi-Fi standards have been revised to include greater speed, efficiency, and security for wireless communication. These developments are outlined under different IEEE 802.11 standards, hence affording a wide range of capabilities and requirements regarding network hardware and encryption. The major Wi-Fi standards that exist include 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n, 802.11ac, and 802.11ax.

802.11a: Operates on the 5 GHz band. It can support bandwidth of up to 54 Mbps; however, it has limited coverage compared to the later standards (Henderson, 2021).

802.11b: Operates on a 2.4 GHz band. Because its maximum speed is only up to 11 Mbps, it boasts a farther coverage compared to 802.11a. It became widely popular around the early 2000s (TechTarget, 2023).

802.11g: This standard was released in 2003 and combined the 2.4 GHz band with a maximum speed of 54 Mbps, effectively combining the best features of both 802.11a and 802.11b together .

802.11n – Wi-Fi 4: Supports both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands with maximum speeds of as high as 600 Mbps because of MIMO technology. Other upgrades include security and range.

802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5): This supports the 5 GHz band only, featuring speeds of up to 3.5 Gbps, introducing features such as beamforming and channel bandwidth increases. Additional Network World, 2023.

802.11ax, now more commonly referred to as Wi-Fi 6, operates on both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands and delivers speeds of as much as 9.6 Gbps. It also introduces OFDMA, which improves the utilization of speed and efficiency when the networks are heavily populated. According to TechTarget, 2023,

Wi-Fi Encryption Options
The range of encryption options that can help protect the Wi-Fi networks goes from the least to more powerful. These are described below.

Wired Equivalent Privacy: It is an encryption technique introduced in the late 1990s. This uses a 40-bit or 104-bit encryption key. It has been found to have a lot of vulnerabilities and is no longer recommended today.

Wi-Fi Protected Access: Besides WEP, an upgraded version was developed named WPA. WPA uses the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol to provide better encryption. It is more secure as compared to WEP, but still, it has some sort of vulnerabilities towards certain types of attacks (Network World, 2023).

WPA2: TKIP was used earlier in WPA, which has been replaced by AES. WPA2 took over and was developed as the Wi-Fi security standard. WPA2 is not as popular as used by a lot of people; it is somewhat prone to brute-force attack if any weak password is set (TechTarget, 2023).

WPA3: The latest encryption standard, WPA3, improves security with Simultaneous Authentication of Equals (SAE) and mitigates vulnerabilities from previous WPA protocols. WPA3 is highly recommended for modern networks (Henderson, 2021).

Each Wi-Fi standard and encryption protocol has contributed to more secure and reliable wireless networks meeting the needs of modern communication.

References
Henderson, T. (2021). Wi-Fi standards and speeds explained. Network World. Retrieved from https://www.networkworld.com/article/wi-fi-standards-speeds

Network World. 2023. 802.11 Wi-Fi standards and what they mean. Network World. https://www.networkworld.com/wi-fi-standards

TechTarget. 2023. Wi-Fi encryption standards and their differences. TechTarget. https://www.techtarget.com

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