Wi-Fi Protected Access WPA, Wide Area Network WAN

Glossary

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 multiple LANs that are tied together via telephone services and / or fiber optic cabling. WANs may span a city, a 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

802.11wireless 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 users 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).