Security of a Wireless Guest Network

[marco_eichstet1]

Hi,

i have a security question reagarding a Ruckus Guest Network.

Basicly the Guest Network is not encrypted (by Default). No WPA2.
But the access to this Network is protected with a Guest Ticket.

How secure is this for my Guests?
Is an attacker able to sniff the Wireless Traffic without having a valid Guest Ticket?
Or should i better encrypt my Guest Network with WPA2?

Please share your thoughts about this.

Thanks.

KR
Marco

[john_d]

Sort of. Client isolation does not prevent a wireless adapter in promiscuous mode (or a sniffer) from intercepting traffic on an open network. While you can't do any peer to peer communications, an attacker/eavesdropper can still see everything that is going on in cleartext. 

With that said, CI is still a good idea on a lot of guest networks where peer to peer functionality is deemed unnecessary. It seems at the very least to save airtime from Bonjour/SMB/NetBIOS needlessly chatting with each other.

(Remember too that CI is per AP, not between AP's. You'll need subnet isolation for that, and setting up a whitelist for that tends to require more effort)