Appendix
32
for interoperability of next-generation wireless local area networking
(WLAN) products.
●
Access Point (Range Extender) –
A wireless LAN transceiver or "base
station" that can connect a wired LAN to one or many wireless devices.
Access points can also bridge to each other.
●
DNS
(Domain Name System)
–
An Internet Service that translates the
names of websites into IP addresses.
●
Domain Name -
A descriptive name for an address or group of
addresses on the Internet.
●
DSL
(Digital Subscriber Line)
–
A technology that allows data to be sent or
received over existing traditional phone lines.
●
ISP
(Internet Service Provider)
–
A company that provides access to the
Internet.
●
MTU
(
Maximum Transmission Unit
)
–
The size in bytes of the largest
packet that can be transmitted.
●
SSID –
A Service Set Identification is a thirty-two character (maximum)
alphanumeric key identifying a wireless local area network. For the
wireless devices in a network to communicate with each other, all devices
must be configured with the same SSID. This is typically the configuration
parameter for a wireless PC card. It corresponds to the ESSID in the
wireless Access Point and to the wireless network name.
●
WEP
(Wired Equivalent Privacy)
–
A data privacy mechanism based on a
64-bit or 128-bit or 152-bit shared key algorithm, as described in the IEEE
802.11 standard.
●
Wi-Fi –
A trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance and the brand name for
products using the IEEE 802.11 family of standards.
●
WLAN
(Wireless Local Area Network)
–
A group of computers and
associated devices communicate with each other wirelessly, which
network serving users are limited in a local area.
●
WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access)
–
WPA is a security technology for
wireless networks that improves on the authentication and encryption
features of WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy). In fact, WPA was developed
by the networking industry in response to the shortcomings of WEP. One
of the key technologies behind WPA is the Temporal Key Integrity
Protocol (TKIP). TKIP addresses the encryption weaknesses of WEP.
Another key component of WPA is built-in authentication that WEP does
not offer. With this feature, WPA provides roughly comparable security to
VPN tunneling with WEP, with the benefit of easier administration and use.
This is similar to 802.1x support and requires a RADIUS server in order to
implement. The Wi-Fi Alliance will call this, WPA-Enterprise. One variation
of WPA is called WPA Pre Shared Key or WPA-Personal for short - this
provides an authentication alternative to an expensive RADIUS server.
WPA-Personal is a simplified but still powerful form of WPA most suitable
for home Wi-Fi networking. To use WPA-Personal, a person sets a static
key or "passphrase" as with WEP. But, using TKIP, WPA-Personal
automatically changes the keys at a preset time interval, making it much
more difficult for hackers to find and exploit them. The Wi-Fi Alliance will
call this, WPA-Personal.