In this section of the course,
we're going to discuss wireless networks.
Now, wireless networks are great,
because they extend our physical network
into the wireless domain.
This allows our users to roam wherever they want
inside of a coverage area.
If you think about college, for instance,
you might have had the entire campus
with numerous buildings, the outdoor spaces,
and everywhere being connected
by this wireless network.
You could walk out to a picnic table,
take out your laptop,
and gain access to the network
if you had full wireless coverage there.
Now, the popularity of wireless networks
keeps increasing over and over again.
Back in the late 1990s,
there were just a few places
that had wireless networks,
but these days,
we come to expect wireless networks
pretty much everywhere we go.
Heck, we even have 'em
on cruise ships and airplanes,
as we travel across the globe.
Now, anytime you go
to a coffee shop or a restaurant,
you can usually expect
to be able to pull out your phone,
and find a wireless network that you can use.
These are convenient to use,
and they expand your network throughout a room,
a floor, a building,
or an entire outdoor space.
Wireless networks are definitely here to stay.
So in this section of the course,
we'll be discussing wireless networks.
We're going to be focused mostly
on domain one, networking concepts,
and domain two, network implementation.
We'll briefly cover objective 1.5,
that states you must be able to compare and contrast
transmission media and transceivers,
but we'll really be spending a lot more time
in this section exploring objective 2.3.
And objective 2.3 states,
that given a scenario,
you must be able to select and configure
wireless devices and technologies.
Now first, we're going to be looking
at the different types of wireless networks
that you may come across,
including networks that rely on ad hoc
and infrastructure modes.
Then we'll discuss the types of wireless antennas
that you're going to use with your wireless networks,
including omnidirectional, unidirectional,
and Yagi antennas.
Next, we're going to teach you how to identify
different types of antennas by sight,
as you look at the different types of antennas,
and their use in the real world.
After that, we're going to explore
the different wireless frequencies
used in our WiFi networks,
including 2.4,
five, and six gigahertz frequency bands.
Then we're going to be discussing
the different 802.11 standards
that are used to define the different types of WiFi,
including wireless a, b, g, ac,
and ax-based networks.
Next, we'll explore wireless security
as we dive into the concept of open networks,
and we'll take a look at encrypted networks
like WEP, WPA, WPA2, and WPA3,
as well as how WPS can be used
to simplify the configuration
of our wireless network devices
and our wireless clients.
After that, we'll perform a demonstration
of how wireless security can be configured
in a simple small office/home office wireless network.
And then you're going to see what happens
when wireless security fails,
because I'm going to demonstrate
how a penetration tester or attacker
may try to crack your WiFi password,
and gain access to your network
using a tool called Aircrack-ng.
Next, we'll cover the concept of a captive portal,
and we'll discuss the different
use cases and benefits
of using these type of captive portals.
Finally, we'll take a short quiz
to see what you learned
during this section of the course,
and review the answers
to ensure you know why the right answers were right,
and the wrong answers were wrong.
So if you're ready,
let's get started
with our coverage of wireless networks
in this section of the course.