Some options for wireless encryption

You're not going to be designing a network that doesn't have a firewall for Internet access. So how do you set up a wireless network without encryption? Understanding wireless encryption is important for deploying a secure wireless network.

The security of a wireless transmission is similar to a written message. There are a variety of ways to send a written message. Each method provides an enhanced level of security and protects the integrity of this information. You can send a postcard so that this information is open to everyone who sees it. You can put this information in an envelope to prevent anyone from seeing it randomly. If you are sure that only the recipient will be able to see this information, you need to encrypt the information and ensure that the recipient knows how to decode the message.

The same is true for wireless data transfer. Wireless data that is not encrypted is transmitted in the air, and it is possible for any nearby wireless device to intercept the data.

Using Wired Equivalent Protocol (WEP) to encrypt your wireless network provides minimal security because it is easy to crack. If you really want to protect your wireless data, you need to use a more secure encryption method such as WPA (Wi-Fi Protected access). To help you understand these choices, here is a brief introduction to some of the existing wireless encryption and security technologies:

Wired Equivalent Protocol (WEP). The Wired equivalent protocol is a kind of encryption method hastily introduced by the manufacturer as a pseudo standard. Manufacturers are rushing to start producing wireless devices before the agreed standard is finalized. As a result, the agreement later found some loopholes. Even a first-humanely attacker could exploit the security vulnerabilities in this protocol.

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Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA). A Wi-Fi Protected Access Protocol is developed to improve or replace a vulnerable WEP encryption. WPA provides a more powerful encryption than WEP, addressing many of the weaknesses of WEP.

Temporary Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP). TKIP is a basic technology that allows WPA backward compatibility with WEP protocols and existing wireless hardware. TKIP works with WEP to form a longer 128-bit key and to transform the key based on each packet, making this key much more secure than using the WEP protocol alone.

Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP). With EAP support, WPA encryption provides more functionality to control access to wireless networks. Instead of controlling access to a wireless network based on a potentially captured or fake MAC address filter, the approach is to control access to the wireless network based on the public Key Infrastructure (PKI).

Although the WPA protocol has greatly improved the WEP protocol, it is many times more secure than the WEP protocol, but any encryption is much better than nothing encrypted. If WEP is the only protection you have on your wireless device, this protection can still prevent you from randomly compromising your wireless data and making most new humanely attackers look for unprotected wireless networks to exploit.