Firewalls for security in wireless networks

Wireless computing is an area of computer science that has experienced much growth during the 1990s. The use of wireless networks allows users to access their home networks while separated from them by significant distances. Due to its convenience and the decreasing cost of the needed hardware and software, wireless computing will continue to experience growth into the next century, both in the number of users and in the amount of data transmitted across wireless networks. Along with the growth of trusted users, there will also be an increase in the number of hackers, or rogue users. Due to financial, business, and privacy concerns, it will become increasingly important for system administrators to protect, from rogue users, hosts connected to wireless networks. One tool that may be used by system administrators is firewall technology. A firewall allows system administrators to implement strict access controls between the trusted internal network and the non trusted external world. The paper discusses the firewall and other security tools used to provide security to the wired networks and offers a methodology to protect a wireless network. An analysis of the proposed methodology and its functionality are also presented.