COLLABORATIVELY LOCATING DISCONNECTED CLIENTS AND ROGUE ACCESS POINTS IN A WIRELESS NETWORK

摘要

Methods are described for using collaboration of neighboring wireless devices to enable location of disconnected wireless devices and rogue wireless access points. A central server computes the locations of the neighboring clients and uses those locations to estimate the location of a disconnected client. These techniques may take advantage of the beaconing and probing mechanisms of IEEE 802.11 to ensure that connected clients do not pay unnecessary overheads for detecting disconnected clients. Methods are also described for detecting and locating rogue devices by collaboratively collecting information from neighboring devices and comparing the information to a database.