Design of secured WLAN by using "packet filtering firewall"

Due to the rapid demands for using wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), the security issues of WLAN becomes an important factor and interesting research area. This paper deals with the security of WLAN that designed for university of Baghdad. It consists of three buildings. The designed WLAN supports four types of services, these are: HTTP, FTP, Email and DB. The security issue that adopted, analyzed and investigated in this paper is the (packet filtering firewall system). The modeling and simulation of the designed WLAN are implemented using OPNET 14.5 modular simulator. For analysis and comparison purposes, the network is designed and simulated in two scenarios. These scenarios are: first the network is designed without using firewall protection, and second using firewall with packet filtering. After the modeling and simulation of the designed WLAN comprehensive analyses and comparisons are performed on the network at various conditions of operation with different types traffic being applied. The obtained results showed enhanced performance of WLAN security by using the proposed packet filtering firewall scheme. The delay is reduced also due to filtering of undesired packets.