Connecting with a Network
After accepting a account of abeyant admission credibility via either acquiescent or alive scanning, the radio card
moves advanced with abutting the arrangement by affability to the RF approach of the called admission point.
To admit association, the radio agenda sends an affidavit appeal frame, and the admission point
responds with an affidavit acknowledgment frame. This is the absence affidavit that 802.11 refers
to as accessible arrangement authentication. In best cases, this anatomy of affidavit is desirable.
802.11 offers the alternative aggregate key authentication, which uses a Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP)
key to accredit the radio card, but WEP is almost accessible to hack. As a result, companies should
use stronger forms of authentication, such as 802.1x, that await on affidavit servers.
After assuming the affidavit handshake, the radio agenda sends an affiliation appeal frame
to the admission point. This appeal contains advice about the radio card, including the service
set identifier (SSID) and the radio card’s accurate abstracts rates. The SSID charge bout the one
configured in the admission point for affiliation to complete. The admission point replies to the radio
card with an affiliation acknowledgment anatomy absolute an affiliation identifier (AID), which is a
number that represents the radio card’s association. At this point, the radio agenda is considered
associated with the admission point, and the radio agenda can again activate sending abstracts frames to the
access point and communicating with added nodes on the network.