Guided media includes Twisted Pair, Coaxial, and Fiber Optic. Unguided media includes terrestrial microwave, satellite microwave, radio and infrared technologies (Warner, 2008). The security strategies for each class of media must taken into account how each codes, decodes and manages the stream of data across these media types.
For guided media there are several levels of security including access, protocol stability and security, locking data elements and packets, and the use of Cyclic Redundancy Checking (CRC) for accuracy and authentication of specific access points,. These media also require the use of protocols that can be used for protecting down to the packet level data being transmitted. The reliance on advanced TCP/IP protocols and options is a case in point.
For unguided media the challenges are more significant as these are by nature broadcast technologies. The protocols that these networks transmit must be protected down to the packet and frame level, including adoption of IEEE 802.11b security authentication...
These technologies also have inherent within them support for firewalls, authentication to the Access Point or Transmit location and extensive use of authentication via key and token-based algorithms to verify identity (Warner, 2008). The most secure unguided networks are designed to very precise authentication and use access as a result.
References
Heegaard, P.E., & Wittner, O.J. (2010). Overhead reduction in a distributed path management system. Computer Networks, 54(6), 1019.
Kritzinger, P.S., Krzesinski, a.E., & Teunissen, P. (1980). Incorporating system overhead in queuing network models. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 6(4), 381-390.
Viennot, L., Jacquet, P., & Thomas, H.C. (2004). Analyzing control traffic overhead vs. mobility and data traffic activity in mobile ad-hoc network protocols. Wireless Networks, 10(4), 447-455.
Warner, M. (2008). IP-based centralcasting. Broadcast Engineering, 50(6), 62-n/a.
