TABLE OF CONTENTS One of the great advantages of a WLAN is the ease with which a guest can sit down and get connected in short order. No need to reboot or install special drivers if you have a wireless card in your laptop, you can enjoy network services or Internet access as long as you are within range of an access point.
Along with ease of use, WLANs offer a sense of impending danger. Unlike standard Ethernet cabling, you cannot terminate your WLAN at the edge of your office space. Those radio signals will carry until they attenuate (or run out of power). Many news articles have been written about the ubiquity of wireless networks and their level of security or insecurity. And here is the tricky problem: Sometimes the people who need to use the wireless network are not necessarily trusted employees they are your vendors, visitors, or temporary workers. Giving these people temporary access to your WLAN could be an administrative nightmare because you will have to create 802.1x accounts for them and delete those accounts once your guests are no longer on the network.
As a solution to this problem, we suggest that you consider creating a guest WLAN. This is a virtual WLAN that will allow your guest to access the Internet (or other specific resources) and that will protect your network from casual (or not-so-casual) snooping. Many large companies now provide a guest VLAN for people who need temporary Internet access but do not need access...
