User's Guide

WiMAX WiMAX, the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, is a
telecommunications technology aimed at providing wireless data
over long distances in a variety of ways, from point-to-point links
to full mobile cellular type access. It is based on the IEEE 802.16
standard. The name WiMAX was created by the WiMAX Forum,
which was formed in June 2001 to promote conformance and
interoperability of the standard. The forum describes WiMAX as "a
standards-based technology enabling the delivery of last mile
wireless broadband access as an alternative to cable and DSL."
Wireless
router
A stand-alone wireless hub that allows any computer that has a
wireless network adapter to communicate with another computer
within the same network and to connect to the Internet.
WLAN
(Wireless
Local-Area
Network)
A type of local-area network that uses high-frequency radio waves rather
than wires to communicate between nodes.
WPA* (Wi-Fi
Protected
Access)
This is a security enhancement that strongly increases the level of data
protection and access control to a wireless network. WPA is an interim
standard that will be replaced with the IEEE's 802.11i standard upon its
completion. WPA consists of RC4 and TKIP and provides support for BSS
(Infrastructure) mode only. (Not compatible with WPA2.)
WPA2* (Wi-Fi
Protected
Access 2)
This is the second generation of WPA that complies with the IEEE TGi
specification. WPA2 consists of AES encryption, pre-authentication and
PMKID caching. It provides support for BSS (Infrastructure) mode and
IBSS (ad hoc) mode. (Not compatible with WPA.)
WPA-
Enterprise
Wi-Fi Protected Access-Enterprise applies to corporate users. A
new standards-based, interoperable security technology for
wireless LAN (subset of IEEE 802.11i draft standard) that encrypts
data sent over radio waves. WPA is a Wi-Fi standard that was
designed to improve upon the security features of WEP as follows:
● Improved data encryption through the temporal key integrity
protocol (TKIP). TKIP uses a hashing algorithm to scramble the
encryption keys and adds an integrity-checking feature to ensure
that the keys have not been tampered with.
● User authentication, which is generally missing in WEP, through the
extensible authentication protocol (EAP). WEP regulates access to a
wireless network based on a computer's hardware-specific MAC
address, which is relatively simple to be sniffed out and stolen. EAP
is built on a more secure public-key encryption system to ensure
that only authorized network users can access the network.
WPA is an interim standard that will be replaced with the IEEE's 802.11i