Wireless network terms and concepts

Security terms

Authentication and Encryption

Most wireless networks use some kind of security settings. These security settings define the authentication (how the device identifies itself to the network) and encryption (how the data is encrypted as it is sent on the network). If you do not correctly specify these options when you are configuring your Brother wireless machine, it will not be able to connect to the wireless network. Therefore care must be taken when configuring these options. To see which authentication and encryption methods your Brother wireless machine supports, see Appendix A on page 97.

Authentication and Encryption methods for a personal wireless network

A personal wireless network is a small network, for example using your machine in a wireless network at home, without IEEE 802.1x support.

Authentication methods

Open system

Wireless devices are allowed to access the network without any authentication.

Shared key

A secret pre-determined key is shared by all devices that will access the wireless network. The Brother wireless machine uses the WEP key as the pre-determined key.

WPA-PSK/WPA2-PSK

Enables a Wi-Fi Protected Access Pre-shared key (WPA-PSK/WPA2-PSK), which enables the Brother

wireless machine to associate with access points using TKIP for WPA-PSK or AES for WPA-PSK and

 

WPA2-PSK (WPA-Personal).

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Encryption methods

None

No encryption method is used.

WEP

When using WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy), the data is transmitted and received with a secure key.

TKIP

TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol) provides per-packet key mixing, a message integrity check and rekeying mechanism.

AES

AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) provides stronger data protection by using a symmetric-key encryption.

NOTE

• IEEE 802.11n does not support WEP and TKIP for the encryption method.

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