IEEE 802.11ac

That, "Okay, great.

This is my Wi-Fi 4 and Wi-Fi 5 rack." Uh, wheel it in, just plug into a switch, and great, now the, the device under test is connected to our test network.

Give it a static IP with the correct subnet, and then we're off to the races.

As soon as Wi-Fi 4 and 5 are done, unplug those couple of cables, wheel it out.

Um, uh, and, uh, especially after 11ac released, uh, the PMF program was, was already out as well, but wasn't mandatory for devices seeking VHT, uh, uh, certification.

And about half of the devices that came through, uh, a- across the ATL, ATL network, um, freaked out if they saw a PMF enabled access point.

So, uh, the, the Wi-Fi Alliance made the arbitrary decision, the right decision, to mandate everyone that is going for Wi-Fi 5 must also do PMF.

Uh, that-

Yeah, so Matt, on this network, I noticed two interesting things.

They're using Wi-Fi 5 and this is disabled.

So what is, can just, we already looked at it in this network, but what does this mean? And like, why should it be enabled?

Yeah, so Wi-Fi 5 is referring to the generational standard of Wi-Fi that you is connected to.

The latest generation of Wi-Fi that's available right now is Wi-Fi 7.

So Wi-Fi 5 is from two generations ago, also known as 802.11ac. And then the actual metric we're looking at here around the protected management frames.

So this is a security functionality that helps with stopping the kind of spoofing or injection of when there is a management frame being trying to be protected.

What happens when you have a wireless connection between a client device and an access point or your home router? People will try and maliciously interrupt that connection.