MRV Communications MRW55, User Manual

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Radio Interface
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6
Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA)
WPA employs a combination of several technologies to provide an enhanced
security solution for 802.11 wireless networks.
The access point supports the following WPA components and features:
IEEE 802.1X and the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP): WPA employs
802.1X as its basic framework for user authentication and dynamic key
management. The 802.1X client and RADIUS server should use an appropriate EAP
type—such as EAP-TLS (Transport Layer Security), EAP-TTLS (Tunneled TLS), or
PEAP (Protected EAP)—for strongest authentication. Working together, these
protocols provide “mutual authentication” between a client, the access point, and a
RADIUS server that prevents users from accidentally joining a rogue network. Only
when a RADIUS server has authenticated a user’s credentials will encryption keys
be sent to the access point and client.
Note:
To implement WPA on wireless clients requires a WPA-enabled network
card driver and 802.1X client software that supports the EAP authentication
type that you want to use. Windows XP provides native WPA support, other
systems require additional software.
Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP): WPA specifies TKIP as the data
encryption method to replace WEP. TKIP avoids the problems of WEP static keys by
dynamically changing data encryption keys. Basically, TKIP starts with a master
(temporal) key for each user session and then mathematically generates other keys