Wireless local area networks (WLANs) have become increasingly popular for their deployment in organizations, campuses and

public areas such as airports and hotels. This is due to freedom of user mobility. Radio waves are used as transport medium in WLANs instead of physical wires. Wireless networks are susceptible to many attacks.

The security of a wireless LAN is very important, especially for applications hosting valuable information. In the WLAN, there exists some secure protection methods, but many of them have the basic security problems.

A major difference between wired and wireless networks is access to the transmitted data. Wired networks use cables to communicate where as wireless networks use radio waves or frequencies to communicate. Wired networks are easy to set up and troubleshoot where wireless are comparatively difficult to set up, maintain, and troubleshoot. Wired networks make us immobile while wireless ones provide us with convenience of movement. Wired networks have better transmission speeds than wireless ones.

Wired networks prove expensive when covering a large area because of the wiring and cabling while wireless networks do not involve this cost. In a wired network, a user does not have to share space with other users and thus gets dedicated speeds while in wireless networks, the same connection can be shared by multiple users. A wired network allows for a faster and more secure connection and can only be used for distances shorter than 2,000 feet. A wireless network is a lot less secure and transmission speeds can suffer from outside interference

The motivation behind this study is the performance and security issues in WLANs. Wireless networks are highly susceptible to many kinds of attacks due to their inherent broadcast nature and shared air medium. Portable devices used in wireless networks are equipped with less processing power, less memory space leading to system requirements on the use of system resources. Therefore, it is necessary to compare the performance of different security standards in order to determine the best security standard which is less prone to attacks and is more secure in wireless local area networks.

[1] Security Issues Of The IEEE 802.11b Wireless LAN The 802.llb wireless LAN includes a protocol called wired equivalent privacy (WEP) which is meant to protect the wireless network. This paper describes some major flaws in this protocol which lead the whole system to be insecure and unreliable. For example, the cryptographic technique used in the WEP protocol can be broken fairly simply. The purpose of this paper is to explore the security vulnerabilities of the 802.11b wireless LAN and to present solutions for some of its major vulnerabilities.

[2] Enhancing RC4 Algorithm for WEP Protocol using Fake Character Insertions and Compression Technique (FCICT) The Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) protocol has been proven to have several security weaknesses. In this paper, enhanced RC4 algorithm that is used in WEP is proposed. The mechanism known as the Fake Character Insertion and Compression Technique (FCICT) compresses the text either by the standard Huffman Compression algorithm, or by a simpler replacement technique using adjacent characters of the message. A performance analysis of the FCICT is done and the overhead caused due to this was presented.

[3] Measuring Performance Impact of Security Protocols in Wireless Local Area Networks In this paper, the impact of the most widely used security protocol 802.1x in wireless local area networks (WLANs) was studied and quantified. Based on the measurements in a wireless network test-bed, present quantitative, realistic findings with regards to both security functions as well as network performance. Firstly, experimental setup including system configuration and protocol stack is described. Then, a variety of individual and hybrid security policies in order to capture the impact of security services at different network layers is considered. In addition, several performance metrics such as authentication time, authentication messages, response time, throughput to measure the overhead associated with security policies on system performance were defined.

[4] New Protocol Design For Wireless Networks Security This paper will investigate a number of security protocols, which are used in wireless networks. Security protocols like Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), WEP2, Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) and WPA2, which are protocols developed mainly to work within the IEEE 802.11 standard. Analysis of the protocols advantages and disadvantages will introduced (vulnerabilities and problems), from the encryption and decryption point of view. A number of measures will be proposed to counter most of the known vulnerabilities that face the wireless networks security today. The proposed measures can be used in a number of security related fields.

[5] Security Mechanisms And Their Performance Impacts On Wireless Local Area Networks This paper investigates the performance of wireless local area networks (WLANs) and security mechanisms available for WLANs. Security mechanisms are Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) and 802.11i (WPA2). In the paper, the performance of IEEE 802.11b, 802.11g and 802.11i networks without security was tested. Then the security mechanisms were implemented and the impacts of these security mechanisms on the performance of wireless local area networks were investigated.

Wireless communications are inherently more open to attack than wired data transfer. Wireless LANs require strict user authentication, data privacy and data integrity to prevent unauthorized access to network resources and protect data from modification or destruction. Many standard setting bodies are working on the problem of wireless security. The purpose of this thesis is to make a comparative performance analysis between various security standards and how to improve the security further. And try to conclude which security standard is best amongst all from security point of view and also analyze which general attacks are possible for a different security standard.

Denial of Service: The intruder floods the network with either valid or invalid messages affecting the availability of the network resources. Spoofing and Session Hijacking: the attacker could gain access to privileged data and resources in the network by assuming the identity of a valid user. Eavesdropping: This involves attack against the confidentiality of the data that is being transmitted across the network.

Access control: protecting the wireless network from unauthorized access. Confidentiality: to prevent eavesdropping. Data integrity: to prevent tampering with transmitted messages.

Wireless LAN is a popular technology for the private communications, the speed of its using are rapidly growing. This dissertation discusses the threats and vulnerabilities associated with various security standards in wireless networks and present various solutions that could be used to resolve those risks or problems.

[1] Wang Shunman ,TaoRan, WmgYue, ZhangJi, WLAN and Its Security Problems, Beijing Institute of Technology, 2003 IEEE [2] Hamid Boland and Hamed Mousavi, Security Issues Of The IEEE 802.11b Wireless Lan, Carleton University, Niagara Falls, May 2004 IEEE. [3] Nishanth Chandran, K.R. Bhavana, Enhancing RC4 Algorithm for WEP Protocol using Fake Character Insertions and Compression Technique (FCICT), Hindustan College of Engineering (Anna University), Chennai, India, 2005 IEEE. [4] Avesh K. Agarwal and Wenye Wang, Measuring Performance Impact of Security Protocols in Wireless Local Area Networks, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, 2005 IEEE.

[5] Dr. Gamal Selim, Dr. Hesham M. El Badawy, Eng. Mohamed Abdul Salam New Protocol Design For Wireless Networks Security, College of Engineering, Arab Academy for Science & Technology, Egypt, Feb. 20-22, 2006 IEEE. [6] G. Zeynep GURKAS, A. Halim ZAIM, M. Ali AYDIN, Security Mechanisms And Their Performance Impacts On Wireless Local Area Networks, Proceedings of the Seventh IEEE International Symposium on Computer Networks (ISCN'06) 2006 IEEE. [7] Phongsak Kiratiwintakorn and Prashant Krishnamurthy, An Energy Efficient Authentication and Key Management Protocol for 802.11 WLANs, Department of Electrical Engineering, Bangkok, Thailand, 2005 IEEE. [8] Ezedin Barka, Mohammed Boulmalf et al , Impact of Security on the Performance of Wireless Local Area Networks, United Arab Emirates University. [9] Dr. Khidir M. Ali & Dr. Thomas J. Owens, Access Mechanisms in Wi-Fi networks State of Art, Flaws and Proposed Solutions, 2010 17th International Conference on Telecommunications, 2009 IEEE. [10] Pan Feng, China Wireless LAN Security Issues and Solutions, Changzhou Institute of Light Industry Technology, Changzhou, 2012 IEEE Symposium on Robotics and Applications (ISRA).