Wireless Security and An Introduction to Packet Voice Networking in the Wide Area Network
ABSTRACT
Wireless possibilities are infinite. Wireless communication is a vast area, with numerous fields in which research and development are underway. This paper makes an earnest effort, in shedding light on the latest in cutting-edge wireless communication trends and technology.
Today’s 802.11 wireless technology promises to open up exciting new
possibilities. The wireless vision contemplates continuous, trusted connectivity for a wide range of client devices including PCs, PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants), phones, printers and more, with seamless hand-offs between LANs and WANs The market value of WLANs is forecast to approach to almost $5 billion by 2005 . With this enormous usefulness and value at stake, it is vital that WLAN communications be adequately protected from security threats, both today and in the future.
A robust and scalable security solution is available by using Virtual Private Network (VPN) technologies. This paper examines current wireless security methods and also looks at the use of VPN to augment wireless security.
The public telephone network of today is in many ways unchanged from the networks of the early 1980s. During this period, there have been great advances in data network technology that have both improved network economics and improved control over network quality of service. It is those advances that have spawned today’s increasing deployment of packet voice.
Packet voice transport using advanced compression algorithms like G.729 can transport as much as 5 times the voice traffic per unit of network bandwidth as the PCM-based networks used in public telephony. Users with existing data networks can often interleave their voice traffic with data at little or no additional transport cost and little or no impact on application performance. Users with circuit-switched T1/E1/J1 voice networks can, with packet voice transmission, often free up enough bandwidth from existing voice trunks to carry their entire data load.
