Intro to wireless technologies - Windows Tutorial

- [Instructor] In the 1980s, a technology designed for wireless cash registered called WaveLAN was developed and shared with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. And that's the group responsible for networking standards that we use today. They formed a committee called 802. 802 stands for February is the two and 80 is for 1980. The technology was further developed during the 1990s, until the committee published the standard 802.11 in 1997. It was then renamed Wi-Fi, as you can see spelled two different ways here in the 2000s. I owned one of these devices that connected both a hub as well as a PC card into a laptop running Windows 95. And it was very slow and it didn't go very far as far as distance goes. And you could not pass any kind of traffic through any walls or anything like that. Let's take a look at how the technology has evolved over the years. 802.11b was a very popular technology that used the 2.4 gigahertz frequency, and it had a max speed of 11 megabits per second. That was followed by g, which upped it to 54 megabits per second. Then n which was using 300 megabits per second at its peak, as well as the five gigahertz version of n which went up to 900 megabits per second. And more recently, we see a lot of 802.11ac cards that run exclusively on five gigahertz, and go 1700 megabits per second. And the latest one is the ax version, which also runs at five gigahertz and goes up to 3,500 megabits per second. Take note that we switched from 2.4 gigahertz to five gigahertz, which gave us more channel options and more available bandwidth. And you can also see the speed increases with each upgrade. These are all theoretical speeds with close proximity and no encryption. Actual speeds will vary based on conditions, but will average about one third of the max speeds that you see here. Which Wi-Fi flavor are you going to need? Well, most access points that deliver the wireless signal to your users computers and devices only go back as far as 802.11g and sometimes n. The popularity will be between n for devices prior to 2017 and ac for newer ones. ax is more popular on the access point side, but not yet on the client side. But that will change in the coming years. With encryption, you mostly only have the choice of going with AES or advanced encryption service. And that uses a shared password called a shared secret. But you can also go with a radius server for offices that link into active directory. Anything less than AES has been hacked already. Most admins are going to leave the channel up to the wireless access point or WAP, as we call it, and leave it set to auto. And it's fine for most cases. But in dense locations, this could be a problem. You may need to manually set the channel to avoid overlap. Frequency choices are 2.4 gigahertz and five gigahertz. The advantage of 2.4 gigahertz is the ability to go through walls better. And five gigahertz is faster, but won't pass through walls very well. Newer wifi will only let you go with five gigahertz. How many wireless access points or WAPs are you going to need? If you buy the same brand, then they're all going to work together in a mesh configuration, which gives you much better coverage. So when you pass from one room to another, you can pass from one wireless access point to another, most of the time without even realize it's happening. Sometimes users will have more than one WAP, and yet it's using more than one manufacturer, that can cause them to fight each other. So you have say a (indistinct) in one room, and you have a LinkSys in another room, and they don't mesh together. So they end up fighting each other for signal. I suggest that you only have one manufacturer and you try to have at least one WAP per floor, if possible. WAPs can be turned into a bridge or an access point. I found that for home users, the bridge is the best way to go. So the wireless is on the same network as the wired network. And this allows for computer and device data sharing that would otherwise be blocked. If you get a wireless access point built into your router from the internet service provider, that's how it works. It works as a bridge. If you don't, then you can buy one. Wireless routers can also slow wireless down. And in an enterprise situation, a division between network segments like a router would be the secure way to go. Distance will depend on your user's choice of Wi-Fi and the materials that your home is made from. There are some inexpensive apps that can be installed to test your wireless signal on a smartphone or tablet, as the user walks around the house to determine how far away they can get from the WAP. Home Wi-fi is not going to be as secure as corporate, but if you choose the latest technology encryption, and you update with security patches, it's going to be secure enough in most cases. I suggest you don't let your users use Wi-Fi to access the corporate network while in public places, as men in the middle of techs will circumvent most security protocols. You can restrict users to only use specific networks such as your home Wi-Fi using products like Intune or other mobile device management techniques. There are many areas of Wi-Fi that administrator needs to be aware of when troubleshooting the home network. Understanding all the various parts of wireless is a good start.