Both of these options select some variant of Wi-Fi Protected Access
(WPA) -- security standards published by the Wi-Fi Alliance. The
WPA Mode further refines the variant that the Access Point should
employ.
WPA Mode: WPA is the older standard; select this option if the
clients that will be used with the Access Point only support the
older standard. WPA2 is the newer implementation of the stronger
IEEE 802.11i security standard. With the "WPA2" option, the
Access Point tries WPA2 first, but falls back to WPA if the client only
supports WPA. With the "WPA2 Only" option, the Access Point
associates only with clients that also support WPA2 security.
Cipher Type: The encryption algorithm used to secure the data
communication. TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol) provides
per-packet key generation and is based on WEP. AES (Advanced
Encryption Standard) is a very secure block based encryption.
With the "TKIP and AES" option, the Access Point negotiates the
cipher type with the client, and uses AES when available.
Group Key Update Interval: The amount of time before the
group key used for broadcast and multicast data is changed.
WPA-Personal
This option uses Wi-Fi Protected Access with a Pre-Shared Key
(PSK).
Pre-Shared Key: The key is entered as a pass-phrase of up to 63
alphanumeric characters in ASCII (American Standard Code for
Information Interchange) format at both ends of the wireless
connection. It cannot be shorter than eight characters, although
for proper security it needs to be of ample length and should not be
a commonly known phrase. This phrase is used to generate
session keys that are unique for each wireless client.
Example:
Wireless Networking technology enables ubiquitous
communication
WPA-Enterprise
This option works with a RADIUS Server to authenticate wireless
clients. Wireless clients should have established the necessary
credentials before attempting to authenticate to the Server
through this Gateway. Furthermore, it may be necessary to
configure the RADIUS Server to allow this Gateway to authenticate
users.
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