What is Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA)?

What does WPA stand for?

Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) is a safety preferred to sTable Computer Systems related to a Wi-Fi Network. Its cause is to deal with serious weaknesses in the preceding gadget, the Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) general.

Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) and WPA2 are conCurrent safety requirements. WPA addressed the majority of the IEEE 802.11i standard; and the WPA2 certification carried out complete Compliance. However, WPA2 will not paintings with a few older commUnity cards, as a result the need for concurrent safety requirements.

Wi-Fi Protected Access covered a 128-Bit “Transient key Integrity Protocol” (TKIP) which dynamically produces a brand new key for every inFormation Packet; WEP best had a smaller forty-bit Encryption Key which cHanged into Constant and needed to be manually entered on Wireless get admission to factors (APs). TKIP was designed to be used with older WEP Devices, with UPDATEd Firmware. However, researchers did Discover a safety drift in TKIP regarding weaknesses in retrieving the keystream of facts packets; it is able to simplest encrypt “short” (128 byte) Records packets. This triggered TKIP to be replaced with CCMP (now and again referred to as “AES-CCMP”) Encryption protocol in WPA2, which provides additional safety.

Applicable to each WPA and WPA2, there are two variations targeting extraordinary users:

• WPA-Personal changed into developed for domestic and small workplace use and calls for no Authentication Server; and every wi-fi device Makes use of the equal 256-bit Authentication key.
• WPA-Enterprise became advanced for big corporations and calls for a RADIUS authentication Server that provides Computerized key era and authentication throughout the complete agency.