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- Create Date October 1, 2013
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802.11 WLAN Wi-Fi Cheat Sheet
This updated CellStream IEEE 802.11 / Wi-Fi Cheat Sheet is designed as a practical first-level reference for anyone working with wireless LANs. It brings together the concepts you are most likely to need during study, design, troubleshooting, or packet analysis, including 802.11 terminology, Wi-Fi generations, 2.4/5/6 GHz operation, channel widths, DFS, frame classes, client association, address fields, RF signal concepts, and the differences between management, control, and data frames.
The sheet also includes a focused set of Wireshark display filters for wireless analysis, covering BSSID, transmitter and receiver addresses, SSIDs, management frames, control frames, Radiotap information, and common 802.11 subtypes. Because useful WLAN packet analysis often depends on capturing in monitor mode and preserving radio metadata, the cheat sheet also highlights important capture considerations such as Radiotap, RSSI, signal levels, channel selection, encryption, and adapter capabilities.
If you work with Wi-Fi only occasionally, this gives you a compact reference without having to remember every field, frame type, or filter. If you work with WLANs regularly, it is useful to keep nearby during troubleshooting and packet analysis when you need to quickly identify what a frame means or build the right Wireshark filter.
Capturing 802.11 traffic correctly can be just as important as analyzing it. You can find our articles on wireless monitor-mode capture here: Monitor Mode Articles.
You can also check out our Wireshark Profile Repository, our Wireshark videos on YouTube, and our Wireshark courses on Udemy.
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