Administration and Monitoring System for IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN Networks

• Main Authors: Pai-Tsen Huang, 黃百燦
• Other Authors: Tseng, Chien-Chao
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2003
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/60216691099315901693

碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 資訊工程系 === 91 === IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN (WLAN) access points (APs) have been widely deployed as the enterprise or hotspot access networks to Internet. As the number of APs deployed in a network grows, an effective AP management system is becoming a necessity for the administration of a network with a large number of WLAN APs. In this thesis, we present the design and implementation of an effective WLAN AP management system. With the presented WLAN AP management system, a WLAN AP administrator can easily collect wireless packets, re-configure APs, and monitor mobile stations (MSs) associated with a particular AP. The design of our WLAN AP management system is based on distributed snooping of WLAN packets and centralized AP management. It consists of three software components, an Access Point Management Utility (APMU), a Wireless Sniffer System, and a Station Association Log. APMU is situated at the administration server. It provides centralized management interfaces for the administrator to query APs status and configure APs. The Wireless Sniffer System is composed of a wireless Sniffer client and a Sniffer server. The wireless Sniffer client can sniff three WLAN channels simultaneously. It collects WLAN packets sniffed from all WLAN radio channels and sends them to the Sniffer server situated at the administration server. The Sniffer server then filters packets in accordance with the instruction given by the administrator. The Station Association Logging module resides on (or nearby) the administration server and collect MS association log form all APs periodically. The association log can help the administrator to find out or trace malicious MSs or be used to provide location based services. With the aforementioned three components, a WLAN administrator can manage a WLAN with a large number of APs more effectively.