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What are the actual procedures as experienced by a person who goes to the library to check his email. We turn on the laptop, checks for the lib SSID on the wireless control panel of my laptop...click connect.. (sometimes I connect automatically, w/o having to check the available signals?)..logs on to the captive portal with our LIB card #/password...logs onto Yahoo. How does that relate to scanning (passive or active), authenticate/associate, and is there a WPA/WPA2 personal or 802.1X/EAP exchange??? and eveything else that I've been studying??

Guys correct me if I am wrong but there is no WPA/WPA2 authentication, it is setup as open network so you connect but the captive portal sort of provides the authentication in the back end to actually go online.

Thanks Mali, My library probably will not use 802.11e security. But you want to comment on the process of logging onto the web...Yahoo, Google...as it relates to what we are studying for the CWNA? Authenticate..Associate..etc.

its a active scanning , as there is a posibility that you wifi card configure to connect any available network , which include pre-connected networks in your history.

its a level 7 security , which is HTTPS.

thx
mike

How do we control our laptops to use active/passive scan. Like i have certain SSIDs programmed, and when i am near one of them, I automatically connect to it. Is that active or passive scan?

You can control this in the wireless properties for the connection, assuming that you are using windows. If you locate your connection, right-click on it and select 'Properties' >> 'Advanced', there is a check box for 'connect automatically when this network is in range'. It is a little different getting there depending on the OS version, however, the check box description is the same.

1a.You use Passive scanning if AP's SSID is hidden and you have your Client preconfigured

1b.Otherwise: Depending on settings on your Wireless Client - usually some kind of " Connect Automatically to Avail. Networks" - either you get connected automatically or you have to click on the SSID which pops up on the tray (in most OSs or OSes - dont know how to put this in plural:)). In both cases you switch to Active scanning and by this Client learns AP's settings.

2.Since Library is using some kind of RADIUS (Captive portal, user/password login), the AP has Open System Authentification you authentificated and associated to AP with no problems. AP feeds you Captive portal page from RADIUS. You log in with your credentials (as suplicant) and AP (as authentificator) gets RADIUS (as Authentification Server) for Handshakes and they validate and authorize you to network. This is 802.11X/EAP framework.

This is my IMHO and real scenario not necessary follows my opinion :)

Hi Ronald Yu,

Do you mean "...802.11i security" or i am missing something?

Good eye, Chopin,
Its that darn alphabet soup again. And don't take that too lightly for the exam! I am quite sure that my local library does not implement 802.11e.