User guide

HiPath Wireless Standalone 802.11n AP User Guide D-17
WPA Wireless Protected Access, or Wi-Fi Protected Access is a
security solution adopted by the Wi-Fi Alliance that adds
authentication to WEPs’ basic encryption. For authentication,
WPA specifies IEEE 802.1x authentication with Extensible
Authentication Protocol (EAP). For encryption, WPA uses the
Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) mechanism, which shares
a starting key between devices, and then changes their encryption
key for every packet. Certificate Authentication (CA) can also be
used. Also part of the encryption mechanism are 802.1X for
dynamic key distribution and Message Integrity Check (MIC)
a.k.a. Michael.
WPA requires that all computers and devices have WPA software.
WPA-PSK Wi-Fi Protected Access with Pre-Shared Key, a special mode of
WPA for users without an enterprise authentication server.
Instead, for authentication, a Pre-Shared Key is used. The PSK is
a shared secret (passphrase) that must be entered in both the
Wireless AP or router and the WPA clients.
This preshared key should be a random sequence of characters at
least 20 characters long or hexadecimal digits (numbers 0-9 and
letters A-F) at least 24 hexadecimal digits long. After the initial
shared secret, the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) handles
the encryption and automatic rekeying.
Term Definition