Rosewill RNX-N400LX Manuale Utente

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.  

 

 

It is the second generation of WPA which based on the final IEEE 802.11i amendment to 

the 802.11 standard. 

 

 

802.1x is a framework for authenticated MAC-level access control, defines Extensible 

Authentication 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. 

 

 

The Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP), pronounced tee-kip, is part of the IEEE 

802.11i encryption 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.  

 

 

 

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