Re: 802.11i

[Tomas Wolf <tomas () skip cz>]

Hello,

 fistly WPA & TKIP are "connected" -- WPA stands for "Wi-Fi Protected 
Access" and it is security "system" for wireless networks that employs 
several protocols to ensure security of wireless data communication. 
While TKIP "Temporal Key Integrity Protocol" is actual protocol under 
WPA v1 (thus forward compatible with WPA v2, ie. 802.11i). TKIP makes it 
safer to communicate using RC4 (Ron's Code 4) stream cipher, together 
with longer IV (48 bits now). While 48bit IV (plus 104 bit base-key) 
gives us 2 to the 152nd power of combination of the key (which is a huge 
number:-). There are also other controlers to guard integrity of the 
traffic, network access, and key management (TKIP is part of key 
management). But that is WPA v1., which is done to be as an enhancement 
to standing, supported hardware... It is done by firmware update, but 
the firmware should (must) be supplied by the vendor (of course).

 802.11i employs WPA v2 as its security system. This version of WPA has 
some more enhancements in store. The most significant one is probably 
the cipher used. It will be AES block cipher; this change requires 
hardware change due to higher complexity of the cipher --> consequence: 
no firmware updates to standing hardware. But as stated, WPA v2 should 
be backward compatible with WPA.

 For more information I would suggest to buy the specification on a 
Wi-Fi Alliance home page: http://www.wi-fi.org/ . It cost only $25 and 
the page is a nice resource for future studies.

I hope this answers you question.
Good luck -- Tomas

Carter, Brent wrote:

> question about 802.11i: Is it inheirently WPA or TKIP?
>
> Brent Carter
> IT Specialist
> DISA/API41
> Net-OPS Assurance Division
> 703-882-1548



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