Question Time:
I was quite confuse before I started my journey towards CWNE that why we have 802.11 states order as shown below. Why on the earth we have authentication before we successfully passed security.
802.11 Machine States:
STA connecting to an open SSID. The summary of it all is as follows:
- STA is unauthenticated and unassociated
- STA becomes authenticated and unassociated
- STA becomes authenticated and associated
- STA clears security requirements such as 802.1X, if required
So finally one day I got the answer so I thought to share for anyone out there confuse like me.
- Do not confuse first authentication state with security. Try to think this as Access Point is verifying that you are 802.11 device and you can understand me or access point understands you and that’s all about it. So it validates or in other words it authenticates that you are valid 802.11 device. That’s why nowadays you see authentication request always has successful authentication response because that’s means AP understood you. So you are valid 802.11 device and can continue talking to access point.