Wireless applications: WLAN enterprise applications dancing (1)

The emergence of wireless networks, the free access to the Internet, the physical access layer and the spirit of internet freedom ...... Undoubtedly, these are the dreams of netizens. For enterprise customers, the goal is more practical: technologies that don't play well and bring tangible benefits to enterprise development and benefits are good technologies; they can improve enterprise productivity, technologies that save money and make money for enterprises are good technologies. Let's take a look at the benefits of wireless networks for enterprise networks?

The maturity of network applications has greatly increased people's dependence on networks. In enterprises, the network greatly accelerates data transmission efficiency, and makes the enterprise's knowledge base integrated, enhancing production efficiency and service efficiency. For this reason, people urgently need to connect to the network all the time. What can meet this requirement is WLAN-Wireless LAN.

Currently, wireless LAN has three standards: 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11 GB. In the past, due to incompatibility between 802.11a and 802.11b standards, this has always interfered with the widespread application of WLAN. As IEEE finally passed the wireless network standard of 802.11 GB, the wireless standards were unified. Among them, 802.11g and 802.11b are compatible, and the speed is increased to 54 M. In the long run, the overall situation of 802.11g unification is an inevitable trend. In the current wireless market, various manufacturers have also launched products that support the 802.11g standard.

Difference between WLAN enterprise and household

The main purpose of domestic users and SOHO's use of WLAN is to overcome the inconvenience of traditional wired networks in these environments by making it easier to use WLAN to "communicate without limits. So as long as you can connect to the Internet, the goal is achieved. This requirement is well met. For example, you can purchase an AP (Wireless Access Point) and several wireless network adapters. At present, with the decrease in prices, such use has become a popular application.

A higher level of applications is to deploy wireless networks in a large scale within an enterprise, and integrate WLAN into existing wired networks within the enterprise to form an organic community to improve production efficiency.

One of the most obvious differences between a wireless network and a wired network is that wireless network signals are transmitted in the air in the form of electromagnetic waves, and wireless signals can be received in nearby areas, the information modulated on radio waves is an internal secret of an enterprise and is not obtained by people outside the company. For family and entertainment applications, this may be nothing, but for enterprises, it is a matter of commercial secrets. Although the wireless LAN gives people the wings of freedom, the security risks brought by it also worried many enterprise users. Due to the ubiquitous wireless signals, enterprises are generally worried that information on their intranets will be transmitted over the wireless LAN, or enterprise information may be leaked due to unauthorized access.

Secondly, due to the integration of wireless networks, the enterprise network seems to be a balloon that can be expanded at any time. Although it is convenient to use, it is necessary to prevent unauthorized users from using it. As long as a laptop with a wireless network card is near a wireless access point, it is possible to access the enterprise network from there. This requires wireless access points to authenticate connected customers to avoid unauthorized access. If this function is implemented by Wireless Access Point AP, the burden on the AP is heavy, and each AP in the enterprise cannot coordinate authentication. This makes AP management a problem. The emergence of wireless switches can solve this problem.

Security is a prerequisite for enterprise applications

After a long debate, the IEEE Standards Committee finally approved the 802.11i standard. 802.11i is a standard proposed to address Wi-Fi wireless network security. Some people in the industry simply call it a Wi-Fi security standard.

Before the 802.11i standard, in fact, Wi-Fi also has security considerations: WEP-enhanced equivalent security protocol for wireless networks, which is such a security protocol, but it can only provide basic security protection, easy to crack. WEP belongs to the first generation 802.11 security standard. Due to its own vulnerabilities, the RC4 cryptographic algorithm is used, so it may be cracked.

After wide-ranging questions were raised about WEP, the Wi-Fi Alliance launched a Wi-Fi protection Access Protocol (WPA ). WPA is essentially a subset of the New Security Specification 802.11i. It mainly addresses the integration of the WEP Encryption Scheme Based on 802.1x authentication mechanism and TKIP (temporary Key Integrity Protocol) that matches the traditional hardware) the defects in the encryption mechanism. The 802.11i encryption protocol is mainly based on the enhanced Encryption Standard AES (Advanced Encryption Standard). It can implement 802.11 data frame encryption, as well as sophisticated authentication and dynamic key distribution mechanisms. Its key can support 128-bit, 192-bit, or even 256-bit. At the same time, it complies with the federal information processing standard-2 certification, further enhancing the protection of sensitive information. The new standard also includes two layers of security protection in the Wi-Fi wireless network card, which fully guarantees the security of wireless access within the enterprise LAN.