Security Design for Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN)

Wireless networking is rising with the ever-increasing need for businesses to lower costs and support mobility of workers. Compared with wired networking, wireless capability offers more timeliness, affordability, and efficiency. When performing installations, there are many tangible cost savings with using less wire between the user's appliance and a server. However, most of the organization that decided to deploywireless network within their working environment often overlooked the security aspect of the deployed wireless LAN. Therefore, this will jeopardize the organization's safety in terms of network security and business trade secrets if their network is intruded by their rivals. This project concentrates on Wireless Local Area Network architecture and the security aspect of the designed network. Firstly, the project will emphasizes on researching about WLAN architecture. This is to ensure best practice method to be taken in designing the WLAN. It is then followed by extensive research to deploy better security to the designed network. However, the security aspect to be deployed is based on the needs and the architecture of the WLAN. The designed network is tested by conducting similar simulation at the lab which represents real - time performance and situation where the network architecture will be implemented and tested. For the time being, 802.IX / EAP ( Extensible Authentication Protocol ) is proven to be the best practice solution to secure any Wireless LAN implemented. Through the simulation, it will be proven that the proposed WLAN design is secure for implementation by any other interested parties