While at a government-operated facility, you are attempting to troubleshoot a WLAN performance problem
using a wireless protocol analyzer. When you start capturing frames, you see a proprietary layer 2 protocol
running over the ERP network as shown in this screenshot. The facility’s WLAN administrator confirms that
this protocol is proprietary and used for both data encryption and compression.

How will this information affect the steps you take to troubleshoot performance problems on this WLAN?

A.
The proprietary encryption protocol will have no effect on your troubleshooting steps because the
wireless protocol analyzer can still decode the PLCP and MAC headers of Data frames. This situation is
essentially no different than troubleshooting a WLAN that uses WPA2-Personal.

B.
Troubleshooting will be somewhat limited because only part of the information needed for performance
measurements by the analyzer is encrypted. Each Data frame’s MAC header will be encrypted, but the
PLCP header can still be decoded successfully.

C.
As long as you load the proprietary software codec onto your analyzer computer, you will be able to see
all of the Data frame information fully decoded. Loading the proprietary software codec will allow you to
troubleshoot the WLAN as though no encryption were in use.

D.
In order to troubleshoot performance problems on a network using proprietary encryption protocols like
this one, you must use a wireless protocol analyzer that has integrated support for the protocol in use.