Analyzing the Wi-Fi networks

When analyzing a Wi-Fi network, it's important to go through the IEEE standard 802.11 as the source of truth as this is one of the most interesting protocols to gain a expertise on.

Wireless networks are different from a wired LAN: here the addressable unit is a station (STA), and the STA is the message destination not the fixed location when the packet is transferred to the STA.

Within the scope of the book, we are dealing with packets captured between the WNIC controller and the access point. The access point (AP) contains one station (STA) and provides access to the distribution. In this book, we will see the how Wireshark has provided display filters for analyzing Wi-Fi frames:

• wlan: This displays IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN frame

• wlan_ext: This displays IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN extension frame

• wlan_mgt: This displays IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN management frame

• wlan_aggregate: This displays IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN aggregate frame

Frames

In Layer 2, datagrams are...