3 november 2004: Additional exam
This year is possible to have
exams also in november to easy the passage to
the new organization. Anyone who desires to take the
exam can register for is it with ESSE3 or
with the students' secretariat. The official date is
friday november 12, 2004
10 june 2004: Additional Lab
Alessandro is hill, the Lab will be held next thurday (17/6)
same time, if the room is available.
4 june 2004: last week Timetable
Next week we have lesson (theory) monday (2.30 PM), thursday
and friday (8.30).
Thursday afternoon the lab will be available for additional
sniffing and other Lab related activities.
General Info & Program
The course is held jointly by Dr. Alessandro Villani and myself.
I will cover mostly the theoric/descriptive parts, while Alessandro
will take care of the labs.
The program is described on the official Faculty page.
You can download a
PDF version of the program if you want.
Timetable & Rooms
During the first week we'll do only "theory"
1-st week timetable,
while all other weeks we'll have 4 hour in the lab and 2 or 4 hours theory
2/7-th week timetable.
Friday morning hours will be used to complete the
48-50 hours of lessons we need to complete the course, so that,
if we don't have other problems, the last 3 weeks of the bimester
they won't be used.
Teaching Material
We don't have any "official textbook." Here are the printouts of the
slides I use to follow a predefined course while teaching. They are by
no means a textbook and I will spend maybe half a lesson on a single
slide and ... slide over the next 10 in 10 minutes. They are intended to
help you in scribbling notes, not to substitute the lessons.
- Introduction, general notions and reharsal of known concepts
- 802.11 Wireless LANs: PHY, MAC and access procedures.
This material is password protected, the user name is WNS.
- Cellular networks: basic notions, history, GSM, and GPRS
- From GSM to UMTS: a short overview of the new 2G+ and 3G networks
- Some basic notions around Mobile IP and other wireless
networks (bluetooth)
If you need some reharsing on IP routing here are the slides
for a primer
LAB material, slides, aditional pointers etc.
- WLAN basics and Avaya AP configuration
- The CISCO AP you can use for "playing" sith configurations
is now available. It is the AP right outside the lab door in "malga".
Useful infos:
- IP address: 172.31.194.32
- USER ID with administrator privileges: admin
- Passwd: you laready know it!!
Plese remember:
- Do not change the IP and Ethernet address of the AP
- Do not change the administrator user, nor the password
- Try to coordinate your access so that differen groups
will not disturb one another.
Failing to respect the first two point means we have to remove the AP and
reconfigure it manually, which means it will not be available any more
for you!!
- The Cisco AP in the Lab is now available with the IP
address 192.168.91.128. The same IDs and rules of the Cisco apply.
You should be able to catch the AP signal in "mensa" to verify the
consequences of your re-configurations, if you don't receive
the signal there we'll try to find another place for the AP.
- CISCO configuration and Radius Server Authentication
- More on Radius workout and Ethereal Sniffer use
- Ethereal dumps on the Radius side
- More on Ethereal sniffing and accounting procesures,
802.11f and Kismet installation and use
- More on Kismeth, Ethereal sniffing and trace interpretation
- Wireless router, WEP cracking and AirSnort
- Netwrk security: from open networks to 802.1x
-
-
-
- Standards web sites and other useful links for additional
details on Lab-related topics
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Bibliography and additional material
Besides the books indicated at within the program, there are an enormous
number of publications covering, wireless networks or specifica aspects thereof.
Besides the obvious consideration that it is impossible to know (or even list!) them
all, many of them, specially concerning wireless LANs have to
problem to be either very inprecise (read: full of errors!), or very generic
(little information to be found), or very badly writtes so they are difficult to read.
The three problems are combined randomly in different books
I prefer to indicate here a few hadbooks that can be useful and
web sites that are easier (and cheaper!) to consult. However, for
web sites I cannot guarrantee that all the information is correct.
- 802.11 Handbook: A designer's Companion , Bob O'Hara and Al Petrick,
IEEE Press, 1999, is a reasonable booklet explaining the standard (1999 version)
in accessible language. Since the authors participated in the standard definition
it is reasonably correct and accurate. The authors maintain a
site
where additional (very little!) material is posted including a useful list of acronims.
- O'Reilly's books are generally very approximate, Italian translations are old and
inaccurate, but they are cheap and normally available very early
on the market.
- The Wi-Fi Alliance
Web site
provides useful information from the economic and marketing point of view.
The Wi-Fi Alliance is a nonprofit international association whose aim if
fostering 802.11 market by certifying the interoperability of WLAN products
based on IEEE 802.11 standars
- GSM World
is the official site of the GSM association, which includes
all major GSM operators in the world.
- The 3GPP and
The 3GPP2
are informal bodies that are fostering the introduction and
harmonization of UMTS (3GPP) and CDMA2000 (3GPP2): the USA equivalent of UMTS.
The standardization effort has practivally moved into these bodies and
ETSI as well as its USA couterparts as TIA accept the proposals without
significant modifications.
- Those interested in science and technical history
can start from this page
and browse its links; however, informations there a divulgative and unchecked, thus try to
accept them with critical spirit and double check them whenever seems strange or not
convincing.
- A reasonable
overview
of basic GSM systems (printable) was put on the web in
1999 by John Scourias of the University of Waterloo in Canada.
Exams
The exam consists of two parts. A "Small Project" related to the
laboratories (or around them, or similar), and an oral conserning the
theory parts.
The Project can be completed at (almost) any time and the oral part
can be done after it, say within two weeks. The oral part cannot be done
before concluding the project.
Projects proposals
Project themes and arguments will be proposed and discussed
during the labs and lessons, however,
if you have your own proposal we can consider togheter if it
is within the scope of the course.
I keep
here a page with all the available projects,
a short description of them, and the name (if any)
of who is doing the project.
Consulence
Additional clarifications, explanations, datails, etc. can be obtained
at any time during lesson or soon after.
Single/group consulence outside official lessons can be arranged
in my office with a simple mail; I avoid "official and fixed" receiving
hours because they are a waste of time for everybody.
Simple doubts can be submitted (and solved) via e-mail.
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White Papers
are technical documents not strictly related to the products that vendors
publish to foster their specific technical point of view of some
specific areas, e.g., network integration, WLAN evolution, etc.
They are written to look as written by an independend observer, though they're
obviously not, since they reflect the "technical vision" of the firm
and its marketing strategy.
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