Frame Exploration: Probe Requests
I briefly went over the frames used to connect a STA to a BSS in this post but I also wanted to show more details on what each of them contain. Since the Probe Request is the first frame to explicitly start the joining process we will start here. You can also look at other info about Probe Requests and other frames from my CWAP Notes section. These are sent by the STA wishing to join a certain BSS and will request additional info about the network. However, the info contained in the request is that of the STA sending it. We will find a lot of information about what the client is capable of in this frame. Ive included a visual representation of the mac header and frame control field to make it easier to see how this all works together. .11 MAC Header Frame Control field Beginning with the info in the Frame Control field, here is a Probe Request I captured on my own network. We see some information that will be useful when doing packet captures with a protocol analyzer. I...