Chapter 5 - WLAN Guest Network Access

Abstract

Sometimes the people who need to use a wireless network are not necessarily trusted employees; they may be vendors, visitors, or temporary workers. Giving these people temporary access to wireless local area networks (WLANs) could be an administrative nightmare because one may have to create 802.1x accounts for them and delete those accounts once guests are no longer on the network. Many large companies now provide a guest VLAN for the people who need temporary Internet access but do not need access to internal network resources. Other companies are rolling out guest WLANs as a public service. They have already invested in the wireless infrastructure but are deploying Internet accesses via a guest WLAN to the areas surrounding their facilities. Acts such as these are considered good PR, and although Internet access might be filtered in some way (maybe only Web surfing and e-mail are allowed), it is better than no Internet at all.