Trace Analysis of a Wireless University Network with Authentication

In this paper we have analyzed traces gathered from 36 buildings part of 3 different universities, libraries, laboratories and public places. The availability of login information allowed us to quantify the MAC address sharing. In addition, we have described a procedure applicable to both WPA/802.1X and captive portal authentication logs, which in conjunction with association traces can be used to uniquely identify users with increased confidence. We found out that a non-negligible percentage - 36% - of the 400 thousand associations we studied are without corresponding authentications. We also found that 32% of the users have used the secured network and have caused 45% of the associations.