Please respond to both posts with 150 words

Prompt: Describe the properties and characteristics of TCP/IP. Explain common TCP and UDP ports, protocols, and their purpose.

Compare and contrast various Wi-Fi networking standards and encryption

Instructions: Responses should include direct questions.

post 1:This week we will be covering Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). TCP/IP has many properties and characteristics. For IPv4 and IPv6, the main difference is that IPv4 uses a 32-bit address while IPv6 uses a 128-bit address. Furthermore, IPv6 offers 1,028 times more addresses than IPv4. A public IP address is an outward-facing IP address used to access the internet. Public IP addresses are provided by an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and assign to the router with a unique IP address on the internet. Private IP addresses are not routed on the internet, instead, they never leave the local network. With that, no traffic can be exchanged using private IP addresses. The Private IP addresses must be within the same local network with a unique address. The link-local address or Automatic Private IP Addressing (APIPA) is used if a machine connected in a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) environment in unable to acquire an IP address from the DHCP server. Next I will discuss the difference between static verses dynamic IP. When a device is assigned to a static IP address, the address is locked in and will not change. Dynamic IP addresses are assigned by the network when they connect and can fluently change over time. The dynamic IP is the more frequently used for users and their devices.

TCP and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) have various ports, protocols, and purposes. Port 20/21 is File Transfer Protocol. FTP is used to transfer files over the internet. Port 22 is used for Secure Shell (SSH) communications that allows remote administration access to the VM. Traffic will be encrypted using password authentication. Port 23 is used by the telnet protocol which provides remote access to a variety of communication systems. Telnet is often used to conduct remote maintenance of networking communication devices to include routers and switches. DHCP is a client/server protocol that will automatically provide an IP host with its IP address and another configuration information like a subnet mask and default gateway. The Domain Name System (DNS) will turn domain names into IP addresses. This will allow browsers to load internet pages. Every device connected to the internet has its own IP address, which will be utilized by other devices to be able to locate the device. Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is a protocol that helps users find data about organizations, people, and much more. LDAP stores data into the LDAP directory an also authenticates users to access the directory.

There are many different standards for networking as well as encryptions. Some of these standards include 802.11n with a 5 gigahertz (GHz) band with up to 450 megabytes per second (Mbps) , 802.11ac with a 5 GHz band with up to 1300 Mbps, and 802.11ax with a band range of 2.4 to 5 GHz with up to 10 Gigabit per second (Gbps). Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) is a security protocol specified in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineer (IEEE) Wireless Fidelity (WI-FI) standard of 802.11B. WI-FI Protected Access (WPA) is a wireless security protocol addresses the growing vulnerabilities of its predecessor WEP. Temporal Ley Integrity Protocol (TKIP) is an encryption method that provides per-packet key mixing a message integrity and a re-keying mechanism.

Post 2: This week we’re discussing TCP/IP. TCP/IP stands for transmission control protocol/internet protocol and is a model used to define how digital devices communicate. TCP and IP are both separate protocols which and are the main protocols used in this model. TCP/IP is similar to the OSI (Open systems interconnection) model, with the main difference being that TCP/IP only has four layers in contrast OSI which has seven layers. The four layers of TCP/IP are the application layer, which covers the transportation of application data, the transport layer, which covers communication between hosts, the internet layer, which covers communication between different interconnected networks, and the physical layer, which covers the physical connections between devices and networks (Shacklett, M, 2021).

In regards to network communication, ports refer to logical ports within devices that correspond to specific functions. There are a number of different ports and protocols and port numbers can vary widely between applications, which can have specific ports configured for data transport. Some of the most common ports include port 21 for file transfer protocol, which enables unsecure file transfers between devices, port 22 for secure shell, which enables remote access to the shell command line interface for a device, 23 for generic TCP and UDP (User datagram protocol) traffic, port 53 for domain name system, which enables computers to query and receive data regarding DNS entries, port 80 for hyper text transfer protocol (HTTP), which is a web traffic protocol, port 443 for hyper text transfer protocol secure (HTTPS), which is a secured version of HTTP, ports 139 and 445 for secure message block (SMB), which is another protocol to enable file transfer, ports 67 and 68 for dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP), which allows devices to obtain dynamic IP addresses, and port 88 for Kerberos, which is an authentication protocol for windows devices. These ports and protocols also vary between TCP and UDP, the main difference being that TCP packets require a response from the destination before being sent whereas UDP packets do not. This means that TCP packets are generally less likely to be lost in transit than UDP packets.

Moving onto Wi-Fi networking, there are a number of standards that have been or are still in place for wireless network devices. In addition there are four encryption standards in place for these types of networks. The standards are all variations of IEEE 802.11 standards for wireless networking, which cover different wireless transfer rates and the frequencies that wireless devices can broadcast on. This started with 802.11a, which covered Wi-Fi 1 and had a transfer rate of 54 Mbps and used a frequency of 5GHz, evolving to the current Wi-Fi 6 standard which is 802.11ax with a transfer rate of 10 Gbps and uses both 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies. In terms of encryption standards, we have wired equivalent privacy (WEP) and wireless protection access (WPA) levels 1, 2, and 3 with 3 being the most current. Each standard encrypts data being transferred over the wireless network, but each level gets stronger and better encryption methods. WEP utilizes 64 or 128 bit encryption, which is fairly insecure by todays encryption standards. WPA utilizes 256 bit TKIP encryption, which is significantly more secure than WEP. WPA2 utilizes AES256 encryption, which replaces TKIP and is more secure. WPA3 utilizes similar encryption to WPA2 however there are better protections in place for initial cryptographic key transfer between devices, creating a more secure environment.