What is Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA)?
Wi-Fi’s original security mechanism, Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), has been viewed as
insufficient for securing confidential business communications. A longer-term solution, the
IEEE 802.11i standard, is under development. However, since the IEEE 802.11i standard is
not expected to be published until the end of 2003, several members of the WI-Fi Alliance
teamed up with members of the IEEE 802.11i task group to develop a significant near-term
enhancement to Wi-Fi security. Together, this team developed Wi-Fi Protected Access.
To upgrade a WLAN network to support WPA, Access Points will require a WPA software
upgrade. Clients will require a software upgrade for the network interface card, and possibly a
software update for the operating system. For enterprise networks, an authentication server,
typically one that supports RADIUS and the selected EAP authentication protocol, will be
added to the network.
What is WPA2?
It is the second generation of WPA. WPA2 is based on the final IEEE 802.11i amendment to
the 802.11 standard.
What is 802.1x Authentication?
802.1x is a framework for authenticated MAC-level access control, defines Extensible Authen-
tication Protocol (EAP) over LANs (WAPOL). The standard encapsulates and leverages much
of EAP, which was defined for dial-up authentication with Point-to-Point Protocol in RFC 2284.
Beyond encapsulating EAP packets, the 802.1x standard also defines EAPOL messages that
convey the shared key information critical for wireless security.
What is Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP)?
The Temporal Key Integrity Protocol, pronounced tee-kip, is part of the IEEE 802.11i encryp-
tion standard for wireless LANs. TKIP is the next generation of WEP, the Wired Equivalency
Protocol, which is used to secure 802.11 wireless LANs. TKIP provides per-packet key mixing,
a message integrity check and a re-keying mechanism, thus fixing the flaws of WEP.
What is Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)?
Security issues are a major concern for wireless LANs, AES is the U.S. government’s next-
generation cryptography algorithm, which will replace DES and 3DES.
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