Multivendor Wi-Fi nets most secure, says gov't lab

NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: JOANIE WEXLER ON WIRELESS IN THE
ENTERPRISE
07/04/05
Today's focus: Multivendor Wi-Fi nets most secure, says gov't
lab

Dear networking.world@gmail.com,

In this issue:

* Military rolls out its own Wi-Fi solution
* Links related to Wireless in the Enterprise
* Featured reader resource
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Today's focus: Multivendor Wi-Fi nets most secure, says gov't
lab

By Joanie Wexler

The U.S. Joint Forces Command has taken a multivendor,
best-of-breed approach to managing and securing Wi-Fi networks.

A Department of Defense agency, the USJFC researches future
engineering trends that will benefit integrated warfighting
among military branches. Based on its own testing of Wi-Fi
networking, the USJFC recommends a multilayered security and
management infrastructure as a best practice to the Army, Navy,
Air Force and Marines.

In its own network, for example, it uses separate vendors for
access points, encryption, authentication, intrusion detection
and network management. It sees a mix of best-of-breed systems
as less penetrable from a security standpoint, says Tony Cerri,
experiment engineering department head at USJFC.

The lab runs a wireless LAN supporting 400 users, expected to
soon grow to 700. Its Cisco Aironet 1200 access point
infrastructure makes heavy use of 802.11a, because its network
covers a dense user population in a two-building area and needs
the extra channels to avoid interference.

"Having only three nonoverlapping channels [in 802.11b and
802.11g] just doesn't cut it," Cerri says. 802.11a, on the other
hand, supports eight to 24 channels, depending on geography.

Client devices include Fujitsu and Acer tablet PCs, Dell laptops
and Vocera 802.11 voice badges.

On top of the Cisco connectivity infrastructure is an
AirFortress overlay for Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) Layer
2 encryption, a Bluesocket gateway authentication network and an
AirDefense sensor network for intrusion detection.

Most recently, the USJFC layered on AirWave centralized
configuration and management software to help scale access point
deployment. This move happened after attempting to automate
access point setup with Cisco's Wireless LAN Solution Engine
(WLSE) for two months and finding it "not intuitive," says Derek
Krein, wireless engineer.

The AirWave Management Platform also gathers RF statistics for
root cause analysis and enables the USJFC to define and deploy
security policy and conduct security configuration audits - an
important security step currently lacking in many government
agencies, according to a May 2005 study by the U.S. Government
Accountability Office.

Bluesocket allows pass-through authentication, enabling users to
log in with the command's Active Directory and then
transparently roam across what appears as a single wireless
domain. This appealed to the USJFC, because Krein says the
command "isn't comfortable deploying the 802.11i security
standard until the problems with 802.1X have been solved."

He was referring to cross-subnet roaming delays associated with
two-way, mutual authentication that are particularly problematic
with real-time applications such as voice. A new roaming
extension to the 802.11 standard, 802.11r, is expected to solve
the latency issues, but not until at least 2007.

RELATED EDITORIAL LINKS

"Federal Agencies Need to Improve Controls over Wireless Networks"
(GAO report, May 2005)
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05383.pdf

Microsoft offers WPA2 Wi-Fi security
IDG News Service, 05/12/05
http://www.networkworld.com/nlwir1959
_______________________________________________________________
To contact: Joanie Wexler

Joanie Wexler is an independent networking technology
writer/editor in California's Silicon Valley who has spent most
of her career analyzing trends and news in the computer
networking industry. She welcomes your comments on the articles
published in this newsletter, as well as your ideas for future
article topics. Reach her at <mailto:joanie@jwexler.com>.
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by Ciena
NetworkWorld Special Report - The Adaptive WAN: The factors
driving WAN evolution

A combination of business and technology trends are changing the
demands on the enterprise WAN. This NetworkWorld Special Report
explores some of the key business and technology trends that are
driving and enabling the evolution of the enterprise WAN and how
the enterprise WAN can become adaptive to support these trends.
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=107761
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