Has anyone had a chance to check some 802.11a specs and or products lately? What did you think of the performance? What are your thoughts on 802.11a?

!!Mod-Please modify the poll to be 802.11a and b please. Typo, sorry And delete this from my post when done. Thanks.

Last edited by quantity on 04-19-02 at 04:08 PM

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For the purposes of most LANs, 802.11a has a lot of advantages so overall I prefer it in this type of environment. Proxim's equipment has some proprietary extensions that provide 108Mbps of bandwidth at close range (compared to 802.11b's 11Mbps). Being in the 5GHz band helps out a lot too since the 2.4GHz band that 802.11b operates at is heavily utilized.

If range or cost are major factors though 802.11b's still the way to go. I've seen these NICs for under $50 which is a amazing IMO. The Orinoco and Cisco NICs have fairly good sensitivity and can be hooked up to external antennas to so you can get some range out of them.

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What are you guys talking about?

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wireless networking

a subject I have no idea about

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Thanks for you responses. What about security? I know WEP is easily hacked. My solution to that is to use MAC Address control. Basically, I deny all Air Traffic except those coming from a static MAC Table and use encryption, "Just becuse It's there." Is this the best solution?

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Ah
I got threw off by the subject in the poll.
it says 802.3a and 802.3b.
Then you all started talking wireless
Try proof reading your polls next time

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Rats.

I saw it the moment I posted it this morning and have asked the mod to change it but they won't or haven't had the time all day long. Sorry.

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Wireless security is a joke by default. WEP's almost useless and MAC address based security's not much better. Someone could easily sniff your traffic for a valid Mac address, then assume that address and they're in. My suggest is to run some sort of VPN or other other strong cryptography (IPSec, SSH, SSL...). That way you're fairly secure.

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What are the odds someone is going to break into my network?

So, the only option left is to VPN into my own network? I understand that to be a valid option and I am not questioning your skill or credential. What can I do short of MAC address control to allow users safe acces into my network without having to VPN in. (i.e. VPN in from the same LAN I wanto to access?) What if I wanted to have a school, tech school, and have the whole campus wireless? How would you go about stopping those?

Thanks CCIE, your input is valid and is being considered for implementation. However, I have given you a kind of loaded question. I really need a water tight implementation. All I can come up with is MAC address control. VPN would be too much.

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If you don't want to take the VPN approach another idea is to setup a proxy using SSL. That way everything going passing through the proxy is encrypted. Depending on your needs you could also require the user to log in to the proxy. You could also optionally firewall of everything except the proxy.

It really depends on your needs. If you just want to give users the ability to look at web sites the above approach would probably be the easiest way to get a reasonable level of security. For a more sophisticated network though, I would still recommend the VPN approach.

Hope this helps.

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