How Does Wpa Compare To Wep; How Does Wpa Compare To Ieee 802.11I - NETGEAR WG511NA - Wireless G Pc Card User Manual

User Manual for the NETGEAR 54 Mbps Wireless PC Card WG511 v2

How Does WPA Compare to WEP?

WEP is a data encryption method and is not intended as a user authentication mechanism. WPA
user authentication is implemented using 802.1x and the Extensible Authentication Protocol
(EAP). Support for 802.1x authentication is required in WPA. In the 802.11 standard, 802.1x
authentication was optional. For details on EAP specifically, refer to IETF's RFC 2284.
With 802.11 WEP, all access points and client wireless adapters on a particular wireless LAN must
use the same encryption key. A major problem with the 802.11 standard is that the keys are
cumbersome to change. If you do not update the WEP keys often, an unauthorized person with a
sniffing tool can monitor your network for less than a day and decode the encrypted messages.
Products based on the 802.11 standard alone offer system administrators no effective method to
update the keys.
For 802.11, WEP encryption is optional. For WPA, encryption using Temporal Key Integrity
Protocol (TKIP) is required. TKIP replaces WEP with a new encryption algorithm that is stronger
than the WEP algorithm, but that uses the calculation facilities present on existing wireless devices
to perform encryption operations. TKIP provides important data encryption enhancements
including a per-packet key mixing function, a message integrity check (MIC) named Michael, an
extended initialization vector (IV) with sequencing rules, and a re-keying mechanism. Through
these enhancements, TKIP addresses all of known WEP vulnerabilities.

How Does WPA Compare to IEEE 802.11i?

WPA will be forward compatible with the IEEE 802.11i security specification currently under
development. WPA is a subset of the current 802.11i draft and uses certain pieces of the 802.11i
draft that are ready to bring to market today, such as 802.1x and TKIP. The main pieces of the
802.11i draft that are not included in WPA are secure IBSS (Ad Hoc mode), secure fast handoff
(for specialized 802.11 VoIP phones), as well as enhanced encryption protocols, such as
AES-CCMP. These features are either not yet ready for market or will require hardware upgrades
to implement.
Wireless Networking Basics B-9
June 2005