Here we have put together a few links that might be helpful as basic reference material for wireless technologies, and answers to questions that students have raised in class.
Counter Mode is an excellent description of block ciphers and their weaknesses, explaining how counter mode effectively turns a block cipher into a stream cipher.
Weaknesses in the Key Scheduling Algorithm of RC4 gives the skinny (in mathematical detail) of how certain keys can allow an attacker to work out many bits of a cipher text from knowledge of a few key bits, decreasing the work required to break encryption.
802.11, 802.1x, and Wireless Security discusses the basics of authenticated access to networks with stronger-than-Wep security.
WNN: Wi-Fi Net News An interesting page to keep an eye on ofr the day-to-days news on the wireless network industry, with links to sister sites on other wireless technologies.
802.1X Port-Based Authentication HOWTO gives you practical information on how to configure wireless Linux systems to use secure authetication. Explains EAP and PEAP quite well.
What's Wrong With WEP? is a short (two page) succinct description of the principal weaknesses of WEP.
802.11i: How We Got Here and Where We are Headed is an excellent analysis of WEP weaknesses and discussion of how 802.11i makes up for them.
IEEE 802.11i and Wireless Security offers a very clear explanation of how TKIP and CCMP achieve strong security.
John Craig asked whether we could help him make sense of how wireless networks respond to congestion, when typically you will see the data rates dropping - making it possible to transmit less data! This is well explained in Understanding LinkLayer Behavior in Highly Congested IEEE 802.11b Wireless Networks - thanks for the interesting question, John !
The Wi-Max Forum Site is a place to look at how wireless is changing. Take the claims with a pinch of salt, though - while information on technology that will shortly make it possible to build wireless metropolitan area networks, there are some indications that exaggerated claims are being made for Wi-Max.
