Introduction of WPS
Although home Wi-Fi networks have become more and more
popular, users still have trouble with the initial set up of network.
This obstacle forces users to use the open security and
increases the risk of eavesdropping. Therefore, WPS is
designed to ease set up of security-enabled Wi-Fi networks and
subsequently network management (Wi-Fi Protected Setup
Specification 1.0h.pdf, p. 8).
The largest difference between WPS-enabled devices and
legacy devices is that users do not need the knowledge about
SSID, channel and security settings, but they could still surf in a
security-enabled Wi-Fi network. For examples, in the initial
network set up, if users want to use the PIN configuration, the
only thing they need to do is entering the device PIN into
registrar, starting the PIN method on that device and simply wait
until the device joins the network. After the PIN method is
started on both sides, a registration protocol will be initiated
between the registrar and the enrollee. Typically, a registrar
could be an access point or other device that is capable of
managing the network. An enrollee could be an access point or
a station that will join the network. After the registration protocol
has been done, the enrollee will receive SSID and security
settings from the registrar and then join the network. In other
words; if a station attempts to join a network managed by an
access point with built-in internal registrar, users will need to
enter station’s PIN into the web page of that access point. If the
device PIN is correct and valid and users start PIN on station,
the access point and the station will automatically exchange the
encrypted information of the network settings under the
management of AP’s internal registrar. The station then uses
this information to perform authentication algorithm, join the
secure network, and transmit data with the encryption algorithm.
More details will be demonstrated in the following sections.