User's Manual

19
Wi-Fi Alliance
The Wi-Fi Alliance is a nonprofit international association formed in 1999 to certify
interoperability of wireless Local Area Network products based on IEEE 802.11 specification.
The goal of the Wi-Fi Alliance’s members is to enhance the user experience through product
interoperability. The organization is formerly known as WECA.
Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA)
The Wi-Fi Alliance put together WPA as a data encryption method for 802.11 wireless LANs.
WPA is an industry-supported, pre-standard version of 802.11i utilizing the Temporal Key
Integrity Protocol (TKIP), which fixes the problems of WEP, including using dynamic keys.
Wide Area Network (WAN)
A WAN consists of multiples LANs that are tied together via telephone services and/or fiber
optic cabling. WANs may span a city, s state, a country, or even the world.
Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP)
Now widely recognized as flawed, WEP was a data encryption method used to protect the
transmission between 802.11 wireless clients and APs. However, it used the same key among
all communicating devices. WEP’s problems are well-known, including an insufficient key
length and no automated method for distributing the keys. WEP can be easily cracked in a
couple of hours with off-the shelf tools.
Wireless LAN (WLAN)
A wireless LAN does not use cable to transmit signals, but rather uses radio or infrared to
transmit packets through the air, Radio Frequency (RF) and infrared are the commonly used
types of wireless transmission. Most wireless LANs use spread spectrum technology. It offers
limited bandwidth, usually under 11Mbps, and user share the bandwidth with other devices in
the spectrum; however, users can operate a spread spectrum device without licensing from
the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).