Wireless Association Captures
Before a client can join a wireless network it must first authenticate and associate it’s identity with the AP. Now that we can easily capture wireless traffic with our Aerohive APs we decided to take an in depth look at the association to document what happens at the 802.11 packet level. This collection of captures show different client devices associating with our Aerohive Access Point.
Successful Associations
Mac Mini
MacBook Air
Samsung Galaxy S5
Asus Nexus 7
In this capture the Asus device begins the association but during this process the Aerohive uses Dynamic Channel Switching and changes from using channel 6 to channel 11. Between the APs the Aerohive Channel Selection Protocol (ACSP) is used to select the channel that the APs will use.
Failed Associations
Incorrect WPA2 Password
In this example an incorrect WPA2 password is used. WPA/WPA2 and 802.1X authentication happen after the 802.11 Authentication and Association messages are exchanged. 802.11 Authentication frames were originally used with WEP security algorithms which have since been deprecated.
Maximum Clients Reached
By default the Aerohive supports 100 Maximum Clients per SSID. When the configured number of clients have connected new association requests are responded to with the status code 0x0011 indicating that the AP is unable to handle additional clients.
Devices
AP Information
These captures were performed using the Aerohive Connect AP250 Access Point.
- HiveOS: HiveOS 8.0r1 build-161337
- SSID: aerohive-wireless
- Security: WPA2-PSK WPA-PSK
- wifi0 MAC Address: c4:13:e2:20:41:94
Client Information
Mac Mini
- Model: Late 2012 OS
- Version: OS X 10.9.5 (13F34)
- MAC Address: a8:86:dd:a3:f9:75
MacBook Air
- Model: 13-inch, Early 2014
- OS Version: 10.12
- MAC Address: 48:d7:05:c7:ae:0d
Samsung Galaxy S5
- Model: SAMSUNG-SM-G900A OS
- Version: 6.0.1
- MAC Address: 78:4b:87:d5:4a:87
Asus Nexus 7
- Model: Nexus 7
- OS Version: 4.4.2
- MAC Address: 60:a4:4c:b9:69:19
