ZyXEL Communications Corporation G220V2 Manuel D’Utilisation

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ZyXEL G-220 v2 User’s Guide
Appendix E Types of EAP Authentication
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WPA(2)
Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) is a subset of the IEEE 802.11i standard. WPA2 (IEEE 
802.11i) is a wireless security standard that defines stronger encryption, authentication and 
key management than WPA. 
Key differences between WPA(2) and WEP are improved data encryption and user 
authentication.
If both an AP and the wireless clients support WPA2 and you have an external RADIUS 
server, use WPA2 for stronger data encryption. If you don't have an external RADIUS server, 
you should use WPA2-PSK (WPA2-Pre-Shared Key) that only requires a single (identical) 
password entered into each access point, wireless gateway and wireless client. As long as the 
passwords match, a wireless client will be granted access to a WLAN. 
If the AP or the wireless clients do not support WPA2, just use WPA or WPA-PSK depending 
on whether you have an external RADIUS server or not.
Select WEP only when the AP and/or wireless clients do not support WPA or WPA2. WEP is 
less secure than WPA or WPA2.
Encryption 
Both WPA and WPA2 improve data encryption by using Temporal Key Integrity Protocol 
(TKIP), Message Integrity Check (MIC) and IEEE 802.1x. WPA and WPA2 use Advanced 
Encryption Standard (AES) in the Counter mode with Cipher block chaining Message 
authentication code Protocol (CCMP) to offer stronger encryption than TKIP.
TKIP uses 128-bit keys that are dynamically generated and distributed by the authentication 
server. AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) is a block cipher that uses a 256-bit 
mathematical algorithm called Rijndael. They both include 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.
WPA and WPA2 regularly change and rotate the encryption keys so that the same encryption 
key is never used twice. 
The RADIUS server distributes a Pairwise Master Key (PMK) key to the AP that then sets up 
a key hierarchy and management system, using the PMK to dynamically generate unique data 
encryption keys to encrypt every data packet that is wirelessly communicated between the AP 
and the wireless stations. This all happens in the background automatically.
The Message Integrity Check (MIC) is designed to prevent an attacker from capturing data 
packets, altering them and resending them. The MIC provides a strong mathematical function 
in which the receiver and the transmitter each compute and then compare the MIC. If they do 
not match, it is assumed that the data has been tampered with and the packet is dropped.