Protected WLAN (802.11 and hidden SSID)

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 (sorry I lost the threading info ... )

> Time Smith wrote:

> Late to the party, but just for useful information, disabling SSID
> broadcast is NOT a violation of of 802.11 :-) It's mandatory to put
> the SSID information element in your beacons, but there's nothing
> that says you have to tell the truth, and likewise no explicit
> prohibition against including multiple SSID


  Thanks for clarifying - I suppose this is the relevant section (8.4.2
in 802.11i):

> > The STA’s IEEE 802.11 management entity shall utilize the
MLME-SCAN.request primitive to identify
> neighboring STAs that assert robust security and advertise an SSID identifying an authorized ESS or IBSS.
> A STA may decline to communicate with STAs that fail to advertise an RSN information element in their
> Beacon and Probe Response frames or that do not advertise an authorized SSID. A STA may also decline to
> communicate with other STAs that do not advertise authorized authentication and cipher suites within their
> RSN information elements.
>
> A STA shall advertise the same RSN information element in both its Beacon and Probe Response frames.
>

  Kinda reads like in fact it does require the beacon to tell the truth
... and therefore that the SSID must indeed be in beacon and be the same
as in the probe response ... but perhaps others can parse this document
better than me .. :-)

  The above to me, reads like it violates 802.11 not to have the SSID in
the beacon ... and as a consequence clients may 'decline to communicate'
with an AP which does not.

  Course this could also have been superceded by 802.11zzzZZzzz :-)

  gene