WLAN Network Design and Security For this task, you will perform a WLAN site survey. Your task is to produce a map of (part of) a building that gives an overview of the wireless networks that are available, as well as an analysis of the network. What you will need: a WiFi-enabled laptop (some smartphones also work, see below), and a place to scan. You can perform a survey of your home, of an office space, of parts of the Monash campus, or inside a shopping centre. If you dont own a suitable device that you could use for this activity, please try to borrow one from a friend, or contact us to figure out an alternative. This activity has two sub-tasks: a) Survey Create a map of the place you want to survey. A simple floorplan will be sufficient, it doesnt have to be perfectly to scale. Your survey should cover an area of at least 120 square meters (e.g. 12x10 meters, or 8x15, or two storeys of 6x10 each). Be creative the survey can include hallways or outside areas. Be sure to take the analysis in part b) into account, by designing your survey to include walls, door etc. it will be easier to write something interesting in part b). Furthermore, your survey must include at least FOUR WiFi access points. These can be your own, but can also include neighbours APs. If you are scanning in a commercial area or on campus, you should be able to see enough APs. If you want, you can create an additional AP with a phone (using Personal hotspot or Tethering features). For the survey, use a WLAN sniffing tool (see below) at at least eight different locations on your map. For each location, record the technical characteristics of all visible APs. In particular, you should record network name, MAC address, signal strength, signal to noise ratio (SNR), 802.11 version(s) supported, band (2.4 or 5 GHz) and channel(s) used. Some of these parameters may not be available with depending on the concrete tools you use, in that case collect as much data as possible. Create maps, based on your floorplan, that visualise the information you have gathered. Do not use automatically generated heatmaps as produced by professional versions of the apps mentioned above. Simple maps that show the values of the different characteristics in different locations are sufficient. You can submit one or two maps, showing different aspects of your scan. The maps need to include locations of the access points (as far as you can determine them, or an approximation of the location based on the observed signal strength). (15 marks) b) Write a report (word limit 700) on your observations analysing the data collected in the previous step. Your analysis should investigate the following aspects: Channel occupancy: Are different access points competing on the same channels? Are they configured to use overlapping channels? (5 marks) Interference from walls, doors etc.: How do different materials affect signal strength and noise? Can you notice a difference in attenuation for different APs? (5 marks) Coverage: Do the access points sufficiently cover the desired area? Could the placement or configuration be improved? (5 marks) Any other aspect of your own choice. Here are a few suggestions: ? measure the attenuation caused by your own body ? measure the download and upload speeds in different locations ? determine the overlap that has been implemented to enable roaming ? describe how you interpolated the locations of access points from the signal strengths Describe your findings and explain them with some technical detail (i.e., not only say what you found, but also how you performed the analysis or why you think the network is behaving that way).