WLAN Analysis with Wireshark (Preface)

As Wireless LAN (WLAN) is getting its popularity, more and more IT engineers are shifting their learning focus from wired network to wireless features.

A regular AP (Access Point) and several STAs are the basic components of WLAN network. In IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi) terminology, a station (abbreviated as STA) is a computing device that has the capability to use the 802.11 protocol. In this situation, the IT engineer just needs to connect to that AP, either with console port or web browser into GUI interference, in conducting configuration and troubleshooting.

However, through the deployment of high density APs in a domain, the stated above action appears to be lousy and easily make mistakes. As such, many network device manufacturers would also sell wireless AP controller to handle profile-based configurations and troubleshooting. For example, in D-Link, there are DAP series APs and come up with D-Link Nuclias Connect (DNC) software application to manage those APs.

The WLAN controller format can be very diverse, some of the them are hardware basis, software basis, where cloud-based is another common accepted platform in the latest deployment.

For most of the junior engineers who would like to get involved with Networking technology learning process, they may become frustrated as of the difficulty to do Hands-on practice. Devices in a production environment tend to stay over as they are.

Most of the articles published in the Internet are dealing with (a) description on wireless theories, or (b) vendor-specific command and configurations. We rarely see any specific information or a series of articles to illustrate this concept from user (STA) point of view. This is one of the focus in this blog where the writer would like to focus on. Bring your STA, get some Wireshark connections, let’s go from there.