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Understanding Basic Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) Security issues
By Eric Janszen
http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials/article.php/953561

Summary

The author simply describes how important the security and performance issues would be if a property uses the wireless local area network (WLAN).

Security
By using wireless, the property could save a lot of expense that were used to spent for installing and also fixing hardware’s whenever there were defections( loose patch codes, broken connectors and etc). Nevertheless, the security issues arise, as the wireless networking (WLAN) can be hacked easily from the parking lot or the street outside the WLAN property. As the author mentioned in this article, all sensitive applications can be protected and improved with additional security systems such as internet protocol security (IPsec) providing a range of different user authentication and data encryption options so that each user can be given the appropriate level of security for their particular applications.

Performance
WI-FI network shares a fixed amount of bandwidth among all the users. Because this network system serves the users as first come, first served base, it is crucial to make sure that all the users have enough available bandwidth no matter how far or close the user is from the access point. By using QOS (quality of service) built into LAN, it would distribute the signals evenly among all the users, furthermore the working efficiency would increase.


Reflection
I personally think if wireless technology is used appropriately it would benefit the hospitality industries. Applying the wireless technology to the local area network with higher level of security with enough bandwidth that would distribute data’s to users evenly, would benefit the whole property. I predict that many properties would use wireless technology to keep their competitive advantage and maintain in a higher position from the tier market. Ever since, the security is one of the utmost issues when using wireless, wireless network needs to built which offers different levels of security level to meet varying user needs, ranging from simple user name access with no encryption through to a full Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) for sensitive user. In addition, with the high level of security, other features such as quality of service (QOS) within the network have to be developed to provide and allocate bandwidth fairly among the whole network users. However, as the technology improves everyday, the secure level increases. A system that will protect and secure the network with a fluent seamless roaming would have to built or updated whenever it is possible to protect it from any danger.