Wireless networking is an extension of the wired networking infrastructure which supports data communications across campus and access to the Internet. Wireless access allows campus network use in locations where a wired connection may not be practical or where more freedom of movement is desirable, for example in a lounge or study tables in a library.

A wireless communications card (sometimes placed in the PCMCIA slot) allows a personal computer to connect to the campus network through radio waves. A wireless access point attached to the campus network receives/sends RF (Radio Frequency) signals transmitted from/to the wireless communications card in the personal computer, typically a laptop. Several laptops can communicate through a single access point sharing the available bandwidth, thus individual performance is affected by the number of other people using the network through that access point.

Equipment for wireless networking is based on national and international standards. The most common standard in use today is IEEE 802.11b. This standard defines a communications protocol for wireless at a data rate of 11 Mbs (Mega bits per second). Due to the error detection and correction required to support data exchanges through RF communications, the effective rate through an access point is considerably less – something like 6 Mbs – and can vary greatly depending on what's physically between you and the access point.

Access Point – a wireless LAN transceiver that acts as a bridge between wireless and wired networks.

Centrino – an Intel mobile technology configuration that will support LEAP authentication. To be certified as a Centrino laptop, the following three components must be present: Intel Pentium M processor, Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 network connection, and the Intel 855 chip set. Any substitutes, such as a different network connection card, invalidates Centrino certification. Look for this logo:

EAP – Extensible Authentication Protocol provides a generalized framework for several different authentication methods. 802.1x authentication is generally achieved by utilizing a specific EAP protocol implementation. For more details, see the Internet Engineering Task Force's (IETF) discussion at RFC 2284 (Request For Comments).

EAP-PEAP – Protected Extensible Authentication Protocol is an IETF draft protocol sponsored by Microsoft, Cisco, and RSA Security. PEAP creates an encrypted tunnel similar to the tunnel used in secure web pages (SSL). Inside the encrypted tunnel, a number of other EAP authentication methods can be used to perform client authentication. The University of Iowa campus uses MS-CHAP v2 as the inner authentication protocol. PEAP requires a TLS certificate on the RADIUS server, but unlike EAP-TLS there is no requirement to have a certificate on the client. PEAP has not been ratified by the IETF. The IETF is currently comparing PEAP and TTLS (Tunneled TLS) to determine an authentication standard for 802.1X authentication in 802.11 wireless systems. For more information on PEAP see one of the drafts.

EAP-TLS– Transport Layer Security is an IETF-sponsored protocol intended to secure and authenticate communications across a public network through data encryption. It is designed as a successor to SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). The protocol consists of two layers - a TLS Handshake Protocol and a TLS Record Protocol. The TLS Handshake Protocol allows the server and client to provide mutual authentication and to negotiate an encryption algorithm and cryptographic keys before data is transmitted. Visit the IETF's TLS RFC website for more details.

Hawk ID – A University of Iowa enterprise directory attribute name for a single campus login ID per person.

IEEE 802.11 – a family of specifications developed by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) for wireless LAN technology. 802.11 specifies an over-the-air interface between a wireless client and an access point (base station) or between two wireless clients.

IEEE 802.11a – an extension to 802.11 that applies to wireless LANs and provides up to 54 Mbps in the 5GHz band.

IEEE 802.11b – (also referred to as 802.11 High Rate or Wi-Fi) an extension to 802.11 that applies to wireless LANs and provides 11 Mbps transmission (with a fallback to 5.5, 2 and 1 Mbps) in the 2.4 GHz band.

IEEE 802.1x – a standard designed to enhance the security of local area networks. 802.1X provides an authentication framework based on the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) standard. The user is not allowed to transmit "normal" traffic until the authentication process has been successfully completed.

LEAP – Lightweight Extensible Authentication Protocol is an authentication implementation of 802.1X by Cisco, which provides a challenge-response authentication mechanism and dynamic WEP key assignment. LEAP has been licensed by several companies to provide authenticated wireless services.

WEP – Wired Equivalent Privacy encryption framework is the basic security model on many 802.11 wireless implementations and is vulnerable to security breaches.