Threats to Wimax Technology

Threats to Wimax Technology

Most of the experts and professionals claiming that broadband data delivered over 3G cellular networks will choke the hope of the Wimax industry for the standard to become worldwide significant. There are too many factors involved in weakening Wimax security, stability, Quality of service etc. In this chapter I am going to discuss the threats involved in Wimax deployment and in the infrastructure after that.

A Wimax wireless access network consists of wimax base stations and wimax Customer Premise Equipments. The wimax base stations provide network add-on to the wimax CPEs. As a serving wimax base station, a wimax Customer Premise Equipment (wimax CPE) selects the one which offers the strongest signal. At this point, the subscriber plays the role of the user while a wimax base station and a collection of served wimax Customer Premise Equipments (wimax CPE's) play the role of system.

The Medium Access Control (MAC) layer and physical layer are two most important layers of protocol architecture of Wimax Technology. Common Part sub layer is the essential part of Wimax technology layered architecture. In this layer, MAC Protocol Data Units (PDUs) are constructed, connections are established and bandwidth is managed. The Common Part (CP) exchanges MAC Service Data Units (SDUs) with the Convergence layer. The Privacy sub layer is tightly integrated with Common Part. The Privacy sub layer addresses authentication, establishment of keys and encryption. The Security sub layer exchanges MAC PDUs with the Physical layer. The Convergence layer adapts units of data of higher level protocols to the MAC SDU format, and vice versa. The Convergence layer also sorts the incoming MAC SDUs by the connections to which they belong. The Physical layer is a two-way mapping between MAC PDUs and Physical layer frames received and transmitted through coding and modulation of radio frequency signals. (Michel Barbeau, 2005)

See other major threats to Wimax Technology:

Rouge Base Station threat to wimax technology

DoS (Denial of Service) Attacks

Data Link-Layer Threat

Application Layer Threat

Physical Layer Threat

Privacy Sub-Layer Threat

Mutual Authentication

Key Management Problem In WiMAX

Threat of Identity Theft

Water Torture

Black Hat Threat

Latest Additions in Wimax Section:

WiMAX Coverage : WIMAX 2 Technology : Wimax Deployments : Wimax Equipments & Products : Wimax Applications : Wimax Architecture : How Wimax Works : Wimax Features : Wimax Limitations : Wimax Services : Wimax Vs WiFi : WiMAX